[ { "id": 204454, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1962", "page_number": 86, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "75\n\nTHE PATTERN OF LIFE IN THE NEW TERRITORIES IN 1898\n\nJ. W. HAYES, M.A.*\n\nIn 1898 Great Britain signed the Peking Convention which gave her the lease of the New Territories for 99 years. The world has made such material progress since that time and urban Hong Kong has itself seen so many changes that it is difficult for us to-day to imagine the rural part of the Colony as it then was, without roads or wheeled transport other than the wheel-barrow, with inhabitants who knew nothing of cars, aeroplanes, or weapons of mass destruction. But having made this effort, we must think back further still if we wish to obtain a proper appreciation of the situation, as James Stewart Lockhart told the Hong Kong Government in 1898. At the end of his report on the New Territory, as he styled it, he said \"Under Chinese rule enterprise has been at a discount, and progress has been at a standstill for centuries. The San On district of to-day must be much the same as it was four or five hundred years ago\".\n\nThe report is a valuable first-hand account of the area as it was in the year of its acquisition and covers the points in which Government would be most interested such as topography, communications, trade and natural products, population, industries and the existing civil government. It also gave its author's recommendations as to how the New Territory should be governed and looked after in future. This article, whilst making use of Lockhart's report, tries to give the background which he, of course, would take for granted. It does not pretend to deal with every part of the backcloth but only touches on those parts which seem worth mentioning for their share in fixing life in its accustomed mould: the village, the people themselves and their history, the clan system, ancestral worship, education, the district government, the background of affairs elsewhere in the province, the prevalence of disturbance and epidemic, popular religion: all factors which made for integration or disruption in a life that could never have been easy.\n\n* Mr. Hayes has been an administrative officer with the Hong Kong Government since 1956.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204678, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1963", "page_number": 159, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "143\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nMOVEMENT OF VILLAGES ON LANTAU ISLAND FOR FUNG SHUI REASONS\n\nDuring the clearance of the village of Shek Pik in 1960 to make way for the new reservoir, it was found that the village had moved a quarter of a mile to lower ground in 1936, a few years before the Japanese War. The move represented an important decision on the part of the inhabitants who were Punti, since the houses in the old village of Shek Pik Wai had been in existence for several hundred years at least and were substantial buildings in the traditional style with stone foundations, door footings and entrance posts of worked granite, mudbrick walls, and with tiled roofs and decorated eave boards. In 1898 there were over 300 houses, though many of these were used for storage and as cow byres, whilst others were deserted and perhaps in ruins.\n\nThe reason for the move was, apparently, a continuing decline of population - 202 persons were moved in 1960, whilst the 1911 census gave a figure of 363, which was probably higher still at an earlier date — culminating, in 1936, in an unusually bad epidemic, type unknown, which reduced the population still further. Following this a decision was taken to evacuate the village on the grounds that the fung shui of the place was no longer good, and had become harmful to the inhabitants. Anything which could be used for the new houses was stripped from the old, and their ruination was completed by Japanese soldiers during the war who set fire to what remained so that it could not harbour guerillas.\n\nFurther enquiries on South Lantau reveal that between the two world wars the two Hakka villages of Lo Wai and San Tsuen immediately to the north of the present 新村 south Lantau Road at Pui O — combined population 165 in 1911, though only Lo Wai is listed—had removed by degrees from old sites on the hillside; whilst a neighbouring village, also Hakka, at the head of the small Shap Long valley had 恰塱 removed to a site on the sea-shore about 1930. The cause of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204936, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1965", "page_number": 44, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "# THE POPULATION OF CHINA \n\n37\n\nWhile so many elements of vitality are in a state of activity for the reproduction and sustenance of the human race, there is probably no part of the world in which the harvests of mortality are more sweeping and destructive than in China, producing voids which require no ordinary appliances to fill up. Multitudes perish absolutely from want of the means of existence; inundations destroy towns and villages and all their inhabitants; it would not be easy to calculate the loss of life by the typhoons or hurricanes which visit the coasts of China, in which boats and junks are sometimes sacrificed by hundreds and by thousands. The late civil wars in China must have led to the loss of millions of lives. The sacrifices of human beings by executions alone are frightful. At the moment in which I write, it is believed that from 400 to 500 victims fall daily by the hands of the headsman in the province of Kwang-tung alone. Reverence for life there is none, as life exists in superfluous abundance. A dead body is an object of so little concern, that it is sometimes not thought worth while to remove it from the spot where it putrefies on the surface of the earth. Often have I seen a corpse under the table of gamblers; often have I trod over a putrid body at the threshold of a door. In many parts of China, there are towers of brick or stone where toothless — principally female children — are thrown by their parents into a hole made in the side of the wall. There are various opinions as to the extent of Infanticide in China, but that it is a common practice in many provinces admits of no doubt. One of the most eloquent Chinese writers against infanticide, Kwei Chung Fu, professes to have been specially inspired by \"the God of literature\" to call upon the Chinese people to refrain from the inhuman practice, and declares that \"the God\" had filled his house with honors, and given him literary descendants, as the recompense for his exertions. Yet his denunciations scarcely go further than to pronounce it wicked in those to destroy their female children who have the means of bringing them up; and some of his arguments are strange enough: \"To destroy daughters,\" he says, \"is to make war upon heaven's harmony\" (in the equal numbers of the sexes): \"the more daughters you drown, the more daughters you will have; and never was it known that the drowning of daughters led to the birth of sons.\" He recommends abandoning children to their fate \"on the wayside\" as preferable to drowning them, and then says \"there are instances of children so exposed...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204980, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1965", "page_number": 88, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "PIRACY ON THE CHINA COAST\n\n79\n\nwith sufficient knowledge of navigation and engineering for this. When Bias Bay or Mirs Bay was reached one or more of the ship's lifeboats might be used to take the pirates, their loot, and their prisoners ashore. Sometimes junks were used for this, which might be innocent junks which had arrived fortuitously, or pirate junks which had arrived by prior arrangement. Invariably at least one of the ship's officers would be held as a hostage during this operation, being released when it was completed.\n\nIf everything went smoothly in a piracy of this kind, no lives would be lost. But the pirates were ruthless if they encountered any opposition or if a hitch occurred. A few shots were usually fired in the opening exchanges, perhaps causing a few injuries, but this made the rest of the crew and passengers more co-operative. Towards the end of this era of modern piracy, when the Hong Kong Government and the shipping companies had adopted more effective anti-piracy measures, casualties became more common, as the pirates intensified their resentment to these measures.\n\nOne important anti-piracy measure was the isolation of the centre part of the ship—bridge, engine room, and saloon accommodation—from the rest of the ship by steel grilles. Access was by a steel door, locked and under constant guard. The guards were usually Chinese or Sikh policemen, under White Russian officers; but on special occasions, British soldiers from the Hong Kong garrison were employed. In spite of all these precautions, piracy continued to flourish along the South China coast right down to the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937. However, there were no attempts on ships with British soldiers as guards.\n\nThere were fifty-one major cases of piracy on the China coast in the years between the two World Wars. The great majority involved British ships, and twenty British Merchant Navy officers were killed. There were also many Chinese casualties, and many Chinese kidnapped and never heard of again. There were also many cases involving Chinese junks which received little publicity in the foreign press. The worst years were 1922, 1927, and 1928, in which there were five, six, and eight piracies respectively. A few of the most famous cases of this period are described below.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205000, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1965", "page_number": 108, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "GOVERNMENT AND PEOPLE IN HONG KONG 1841 - 1962 99\n\nwas actually protecting local Chinese. The Colonial Office had no desire to see the indigenous population handed over to the power of the Hong Kong British business interests. It was not considered until the 1870s that the Chinese might have a part to play in the function of government, the Colonial Office believing that \"the testimony of those best acquainted with them represent the Chinese race as endowed with much intelligence but very deficient in the elements of morality\" (Secretary of State for the Colonies to Sir John Bowring). The first Chinese member of the Legislative Council was not appointed till 1880, and he, so a Colonial Office minute tells us, was a cipher. While obviously it was not practical to give much in the way of electoral power to either the British or the Chinese communities in the nineteenth century, it seems a pity that more was not done between the two world wars when it might have been feasible. There was a certain broadening of the Executive Council by greater community representation soon after the first war, and significantly, as Mr. Endacott points out, what had been the continuous representation on the Council since 1850 of Jardine, Matheson was interrupted in 1921. But the slump in Europe, its effect on the Colony's trade, and the rising militarism of Japan all discouraged progress.\n\nIt is true that the Colony has gained some measure of independence over the years from control from London. It is financially self-supporting, and since 1958 the annual estimates have no longer been submitted to the Secretary of State. Representation on the two Councils, Legislative and Executive, has been broadened, though there is still no elected element. Furthermore, an effort has been made to bring local people into the ranks of the Civil Service, though it has not met with the success of similar efforts in, for example, former African colonies.\n\nMr. Endacott notes that in 1952 for the first time a locally recruited officer was promoted to be the head of a government department; unfortunately, he does not tell us which department, or how often this has happened again in the succeeding thirteen years. For many and various reasons, the recruitment of Chinese to the Administrative Service in particular has been slow. At first sight, though a self-governing Hong Kong is an impossibility in view of the international situation, a largely Chinese territory might", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205058, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1966", "page_number": 14, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "A PLEA FOR A REGIONAL APPROACH TO CHINESE HISTORY:\n\nTHE CASE OF THE SOUTH CHINA COAST Based on A Lecture Delivered on 4th April, 1966\n\nJOHN J. NOLDE\n\nEver since men such as Thucydides, or Ssu-ma Ch'ien, began to collect, analyze, and interpret historical documents, they have been, from time to time, vexed by a series of nagging questions: How valid and authentic are the documents I have used? How closely does the portrait I have painted of the past correspond to the real world of the people who lived in that past? Have I, in fact, really described what was \"going on\"?\n\nOr to put the question the other way: Is there not always a danger that the historian may be led by his documents to create a picture of the past that is far too broad and general to have any relevance for the people living at that place and at that time? I wonder, for example, whether the studies of the coming of the Varangians to Russia in the ninth century have much to do with the lives and loves of the people then living along the Russian river system; or whether detailed analyses of the political structure of Renaissance Italy have much to do with the way the average Italian really lived. In short, if \"history is man's memory of what men have said and done\", to use Carl Becker's phrase, with what accuracy does the historian's tale reflect what was actually said and done? Is not the historian's view of the past not always in danger of being distorted by the zeitgeist of his own era (as Becker again would have it), and that what he may think important was of little consequence to those living at the time?\n\nI don't doubt that the certain Big Events are important, especially in terms of the extent to which they explain the general course of history, why the stream of history seemed to run in one direction and not another. Furthermore, I would be the first to agree that such events as the Pelopponesian Wars or the French Revolution did dominate the life and thoughts of the peoples living in those places at that time. But is this always, or even usually, the case?\n\nThe author is Dean of the College of Arts and Science at the University of Maine.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205099, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1966", "page_number": 55, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "50\n\nHERBERT FRANKE\n\nmonks, missionaries and translators of the holy scriptures came from Iranian Central Asia at a time when there was certainly no universal peace in Asia. But was there really something like a Pax Mongolica, even during a very short time? The Mongol rulers of China who had adopted the Chinese dynastic name of Yüan in 1271, regarded themselves, from Khubilai on, more as rulers of China than of a universal empire of which China was only a part. This is reflected, as we shall see, in the Yuan dynastic history which is usually vague and uninformed as soon as a geographical area outside of China proper is mentioned. Although Khubilai was the Great Khan of all Mongols, his rule was always threatened by dissatisfied pretenders who tried to set up their own kingdoms in the Northern and Western regions, and there are recorded, in Chinese historical sources at least, as many feuds, campaigns and full-scale wars with other Mongol rulers and pretenders as good-will embassies from the other Mongol ulus (dominions); those of Chagatai in Central Asia, the Ilkhans in Persia and the Golden Horde rulers of Southwestern Siberia and South Russia. The situation, at least in the fourteenth century, among the non-Chinese ulus was not much different. The Golden Horde rulers and the Persian Ilkhans were, to say the least, not friendly to each other and war was frequent. In short, it seems as if the Pax Mongolica is no more than one of those brilliant simplifications that can serve as chapter titles for world history books. There remains some doubt whether it was easier to get from, say, Venice or the Black Sea region or Persia to China under the Mongols than some centuries earlier.\n\nHowever that may be, there can be no doubt that there was a certain amount of cultural contact between China and the non-Chinese West under the rule of the Mongol emperors. But the fact remains that there was no Chinese Marco Polo, no Chinese Rubruk or Giovanni da Montecorvino. China, it seems, was not very much interested in learning more about the countries of the West; we have in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries no Chinese pilgrims like I-ching and Hsüan-tsang who had travelled to India in search of the Buddhist religion. There was no appeal and no challenge to learn more about the West. This relative indifference towards the civilization outside one's own geographical habitat and cultural background is to be seen in The Secret History of the Mongols, This fascinating book, the oldest", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205119, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1966", "page_number": 75, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "70\n\nHERBERT FRANKE\n\ncountry which had direct contacts with Europe, China and India and where information on all these parts of the world was available that went beyond the hazy and fanciful notions which existed in the other civilizations on foreign and distant countries. The geographical situation of Persia evidently favored this universal outlook on history as much as the Mongol domination over great parts of Asia had contributed to it.\n\nIf we try to assess the lasting influences of the Mongol rule in Asia we are confronted with the fact that from the second half of the thirteenth century on, or, to be more specific, from Kublai Khan (r. 1260-1294) on it is difficult to speak of a single Mongol empire. In theory Kublai Khan was, as Great Khan, the ruler of an empire stretching from China and Korea to Iran and Southern Russia, but the diversity of the subjugated countries made itself more and more felt. Kublai regarded himself more a Chinese emperor than a universal ruler. In China as elsewhere in the Mongol empire development followed a line where the local cultural substratum after some initial eclipses gradually re-emerged. In the Near Eastern and South Russian Mongol dominions this process was furthered by the Mongol rulers' conversion to Islam, and in Central Asia the Chagatay dominion followed soon afterwards. In the middle of the fourteenth century this development had already gone far. We should therefore regard the individual Mongol dominions as distinct cultural entities under Mongol rulers. There was no such thing as a Mongol civilization which reached all social strata in the individual dominions. On the contrary, the ruling Mongol and Turkish minority, was everywhere assimilated in varying degrees by the existing national civilizations. This process of assimilation was, as far as China is concerned, accelerated after 1368. The national dynasty of Ming which had, through a series of civil wars, gained supremacy over China and driven the Mongol ruler and his followers out of China and back into the steppes, introduced marriage legislation which forbade foreigners to intermarry within their group and instead encouraged or even prescribed intermarriage with the Chinese. This de-segregation imposed by the state resulted in the virtual extinction of the foreign national and linguistic groups on Chinese soil within a relatively short period.28 China and her traditional civilization had, by the end of the fourteenth century, scored a complete victory over the invaders and immigrants. In the other parts of\n\nPage 75\n\nPage 76", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206004, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1970", "page_number": 84, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "CHINESE EMIGRATION \n\nAND THE DECK PASSENGER TRADE \n\nA. D. BLUE* \n\nUntil after the Treaty of Tientsin of 1858, emigration from China was illegal, but this law, like so many others, was more honoured in the breach than in the observance, especially in the southern provinces of Fukien and Kwangtung, and to a lesser extent Kwangsi. Traders, however, were allowed to go abroad under certain conditions, which usually included eventual return to China. There had been emigration from these southern parts of China to most regions of South-east Asia for centuries before 1858, and there were flourishing colonies of Chinese at all the main ports when the first Europeans arrived there in the 16th century. The Ming fleet under Cheng Ho is said to have killed five thousand Chinese at Palembang in 1406, and while this is almost certainly an exaggeration, it is certain that these Chinese colonies were already populous. While treating briefly with Chinese emigration to other parts of the world, the following essay deals mainly with emigration to South-east Asia. The Chinese called this region the 'Nanyang', which literally means 'Southern Ocean'; but it is often used to describe other countries even further south, such as Australia, New Guinea, and the South Pacific islands. In the pre-European and early European eras, most overseas Chinese were traders, money lenders, and craftsmen, and their contribution to the economy of South-east Asia was out of all proportion to their numbers.\n\nThe civil wars which succeeded the Manchu defeat of the Mings in south China in the mid-17th century gave a strong impetus to emigration; but the arrival of the Europeans in South-east Asia in time created the conditions favourable to Chinese settlement on a much larger scale. The Chinese were often the intermediaries between the Europeans and the native peoples, useful to each, but periodically incurring hostility from both. As they increased in numbers, the Chinese posed increasingly\n\n*The author served as an Engineer Officer with the China Navigation Company from 1928 until 1938, and was on the Yangtse in 1930 in the Shengking and again in 1934 in the Wuhu. He was captured by pirates in the Newchang river in Manchuria in 1933 and held prisoner for five and a half months. Three of his articles have been published previously in the Journal: \"European Navigation on the Yangtse\" in Vol. 3, 1963, \"Piracy on the China Coast\" in Vol. 5, 1965, and \"The China Coasters\" in Vol. 7, 1967.\n\n* See the note at the end of this article.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206331, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1971", "page_number": 148, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "A BRIEF REPORT ON SUNG-TYPE POTTERY FINDS IN HONG KONG\n\nJ. C. Y. WATT*\n\nTHE SITES\n\nOver the past thirty years various pottery finds attributed to the Sung period have been made in many parts of Hong Kong. For the purpose of this paper, two representative sites will be described and the finds discussed. The sites are: the area of Kowloon City near the present Kai Tak Airport, and Nim Shu Wan on the eastern coast of Lantau Island, the largest of the islands of Hong Kong.\n\nKowloon City, formerly called Kuan-fu Chai, was the administrative centre of the salt-pans on the north coast of Kowloon Bay. These salt-pans were one of the chief official centres of production of salt in south China during the Southern Sung period2. The existence of the Kuan-fu salt-pans, which we know from historical records, is confirmed by an inscription written by one of the salt-officers, Yen I-chang, in 1274 and carved on a rock which still stands today. The rock is situated behind a Tien-hou temple in Joss House Bay. Kuan-fu Chai was also one of the stopping places of the fleeing court of the last princes of the Sung dynasty3.\n\nIt is not surprising that a site with so much connection with Sung history should yield archaeological finds of the Sung period. The first group of finds made in this area, which are still partially available for inspection and have a fair claim to be Sung, were unearthed intermittently from a small hill which used to be known as the Sacred Hill. This hill, on which stood the Sung Wang T'ai, the Sung Princes' Rock, was levelled during the Japanese occupation in the Second World War when the airfield was extended. When the hill was demolished a large quantity of pottery was unearthed, which consisted of celadons, green glazed\n\n*Mr. Watt is Assistant Curator, City Museum and Art Gallery, Hong Kong. His note \"A Pair of Pottery Covered Jars found at Shek Pik, Lantau Island\" appeared in Vol. 9 (1969) of this Journal, pp. 161-163. This article is based on a paper presented by the author at the Manila Trade Pottery Seminar held in March, 1968.\n\nPlates 1-10 illustrate this article.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206364, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1971", "page_number": 181, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "HISTORY OF MILITARY VOLUNTEERS IN H.K.\n\n165\n\nkam Lo (1893-1959) as a private.40 He was Oxford-educated and a prominent barrister, related through marriage to the Ho Tung family, and thus could fit in. He was no doubt persuaded to join because of the emergency created by the General Strike of 1925-26; that is, if he had not joined earlier. It would be interesting to know whether he was the first, or among the first, Hong Kong Chinese to join the Corps.41\n\nBecause of the empire-wide Volunteer Movement and because of or perhaps despite two World Wars, the British volunteers have often been ex-Regulars, ex-Militia or, mostly, ex-Volunteers either at home or in other places. A few examples will show this general tendency over the years. H. H. Read, who sent a letter and photograph of the 1882 Volunteers for the 1937 Year-book, mentions that he had come out from England in 1882 “and having served in the 2nd Norfolk Rifle Volunteers (Windsor Review 1881) I joined the Hong Kong Volunteer Artillery which was commanded by Col. Crawford, R. A.”.42 Sir John Carrington, Chief Justice of Hong Kong, who was Commandant of the Corps 1896-1901, had served with the British Guiana Militia before coming to Hong Kong.43 Arthur Chapman, Commandant from 1907, had come to Hong Kong in 1889 as Assessor of Rates and had served in his native Yorkshire for some years as a member of the 1st East Riding of Yorkshire Royal Garrison Artillery (Volunteers).44 Many other examples could be quoted, including His Excellency Sir Thomas Southorn, Colonial Secretary and Officer Administering the Government in 1935 who, in his address to the Corps printed in the 1935-36 Year Book, was described as \"a Volunteer in Ceylon for many years\".45\n\nIn the later period, because of two world wars, the amount of previous military experience met with in the Volunteers has been considerable, particularly in the period between the wars when there were many persons in the Colony who had seen much service in 1914-18. When the Volunteers got going in earnest\n\n40 Vol, 1954, p. 240.\n\n41 But see note 28 above.\n\n42 Y.B., 1937, p. 28.\n\n43 J. W. Norton-Kyshe, The History of the Laws and Courts of Hong Kong (Hong Kong, 2 Vols, 1898): see index.\n\n44 Twentieth Century Impressions, p. 277.\n\n45 Y.B., 1935-36, p. 4.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206399, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1971", "page_number": 216, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "190 \n\nREV. JAMES LEGGE\n\nthe excitement and activity. Then came the close of the war in America, which had produced a feverish activity in the cotton market, ultimately disastrous to many. There followed, in 1866, the commercial disasters consequent on the fall of Overend and Gurney, and the panic at home, with the crashing of banks and the downfall of Houses which had been supposed to be firm as the foundations of the mountain behind us. It was a time of trouble and darkness. Sir Hercules came to the Colony when the tide was rising, and he had it at the flood for the greater part of his time. There remains the Robinson Road to perpetuate his name. When he went away, Mr. Mercer took his place as acting governor, an able man and accomplished, who would have done better for himself had he ventured to assume more responsibility. Then came Sir Richard MacDonnell to the helm at a time of great difficulty; but here I must bring my reminiscences of Hongkong to a close. The events of Sir Richard's incumbency are fresh in the memory of most of you, fresher, indeed, than in my own, for I was absent from the Colony during his administration for three whole years. There are none of us but would rejoice to hear of the reinvigoration of his health. In these recent years the capabilities of the telegraph wire and of the Suez Canal have come fully into play. Their effects on the Colony have already been great, and they will yet be greater.\n\nAnd now, as I draw to a conclusion, permit me to observe that the more than thirty years of my residence in the East have witnessed events of almost unparalleled magnitude and change all over the world. What wars and revolutions have taken place in Europe! in America! in India! in Africa! But great as they have been, they have not been greater than those which have taken place, here in the Far East. When I think of China opened as it has been, and of Japan pursuing with much more willing and rapid steps the career of progress, I can scarcely realize the contrast between the state of things in 1839 and 1872. We sometimes doubt if China be really moving, but moving it is; and if I sometimes fret at the slowness of its advance, and wish that there were more in it of the mobility of its neighbour, yet in the end that slowness tends to increase my respect for the country and its people. There must be a great future yet for the country. In Great Britain there is an area of 12,000 miles of coal fields,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206629, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1972", "page_number": 177, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "THREE CHINESE DEITIES\n\n171\n\ndated either about the turn of the second millennium BC, or mid-eleventh century BC (ca. 1121 BC) about the same time as the Trojan wars. King Wu's victory is the theme of many Chinese legends and also forms the plot of the Deification of the Gods, which was recounted by story tellers the length and breadth of China. Woven into its historical background are a multitude of supernatural events involving the heroes before they were deified. They were divided into two forces: the benevolent under King Wu, and the malevolent under King Chou. The battle was fought with practically every form of weapon known to man and included the use of flame, gas and germ warfare, together with the conventional swords, spears and arrows.\n\nThis long Taoist novel is known, either in part or in whole, by the Chinese peasants, many of whom believe quite genuinely that the gods, both Taoist and Buddhist, were first deified at this juncture. It portrays many of the Buddhist and Taoist heroes, describing the events leading to their deification, and it played an important role in Chinese iconography, crystallising the beliefs and characteristics of the Chinese deities. Although several major characters link the events together and provide the thread for the story, most of the heroes appear only in one or two episodes.\n\nFrom this mixture of Buddhist and Taoist heroes in this fifteenth-century novel may have developed the practice of worshipping Taoist deities side by side with Buddhas and other Buddhist religious figures in Chinese temples; and in many a Chinese mind these Taoist mythological and folklore deities are inextricably involved with Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.\n\nGENERAL YIN CH'IAO\n\nXHT\n\nThe President of the Ministry of Time and The Supreme Ruler of the Year and the Seasons.\n\nAlso known as T’AI SUI (★A)\n\nBackground\n\nIn the spirit world of Chinese folk religion, the Ministry of Time is ruled over by the deified hero, General or Marshal Yin Ch'iao, who bears the title T'ai Sui. He is a stellar deity particularly connected with the planet Jupiter, worshipped China-wide, and is said to be one of the fiercest gods in the pantheon who has to be placated if one is moving, building or when the ground is disturbed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206686, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1972", "page_number": 234, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "228\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nThis book is one of the gems of a vast movement. Between the two world wars, Chinese scholars took a great interest in the study of ethnology and folklore. The two most important groups were in Peking University and in the Sun Yat-sen University of Canton. After the May Fourth Movement, Chinese intellectuals fought against their traditional culture and its Confucian interpretation, and looked toward the West.\n\nEthnology was one of the by-products of this new fashion for the Occident and Science. Dissatisfied with a mere copy of Western culture, some people realised at this time that they had, in China itself, a whole culture buried in scorn, which deserved to become part of modern culture. And the movement towards a mass culture, in the early thirties, used for propaganda both by left-wing intellectuals and by missionaries, saw it as a gold mine to be exploited.\n\nThis interest in folk culture was not something new in China. In the Ming dynasty, scholars scandalously proclaimed certain popular novels and plays to be masterpieces comparable to famous classics, while the staid scholars did not even grant them the dignity of literature. Moreover, in Chinese literary history, a keen interest in folk literature has periodically risen in attempts to revive a stereotyped academism. However, in the XXth century, this movement was brought about by ethnologists, and not by avant-garde scholars of literature.\n\nThis ethnological interest had a certain influence. Several modern poets used the tone of popular songs; Lao She studied the folklore of Peking and recalled it in his novels; Wen Yi-tuo used ethnological data to explain the Songs of Ch'u and thus gave more insight into this famous anthology than philological interpretations had ever done.\n\nAmong the materials brought by Chinese ethnologists, the Choice of \"Yang ke\" from Ting Hsien is now a classic, and its translation is very welcome. It was part of a general survey made by a team on rural life in that district, situated about 128 miles south of Peking. The original meaning of \"Yang ke\" is folk songs sung while transplanting the young rice shoots. But it took on a broader sense: short operas performed by amateurs in villages, with music and singing mainly drawn from folk songs. In Peking and elsewhere, these short scenes were sometimes sung by actors on stilts, in processions.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207444, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 212, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "204\n\nDONALD C. BOWIE\n\nthan he need. The improvement in his attitude to us in 1945 as the war drew to a close was significant. I never felt safe with him. His management of drafts of patients coming to our hospital from P.O.W. camps showed gross negligence particularly in the early year or so and I found it scandalous that he allowed a patient with acute and easily remediable intestinal obstruction to reach death's door in 1942 before allowing him to be sent to the hospital. How far blame should be laid on Saito and how far his commander, Tokunaga, should bear responsibility I do not know. I was then, and still remain, glad that we did not have to have Saito as our master if we had been losing the war,\n\nI thought Sergeant Seino was the most intelligent of all the Japanese army administrators with whom we came in contact. It was he who was most closely concerned with our routine affairs. He retained his dignity and upheld his position, but he was a man who could be talked to though not easily swayed. He never let his army down, and he never slapped me though he did, I know administer a token slapping to one of our officer patients whom he had caught communicating on a family matter with the outside world through the medium of our parcels. I do not know what happened to him after the Japanese surrender, but so far as we were concerned he did his duty fairly and earned a degree of my respect.\n\nJapanese officers and N.C.O's nearly always wore swords and always on duty wore what used to be called field boots in the British army in the First War and between the wars when they were worn by cavalry and gunner officers and by field officers in other regiments and corps. The Japanese used to skiff (or \"skliff\" is likely an OCR error for \"scuff\" or \"skiff\") their feet along the ground thus making an important noise as they walked, well suited to the dignity of their wearers.\n\nAt first in 1942 the guards were drawn from Japanese units but later were Formosans (Taiwanese). The latter were of no great quality and were poorly clad and equipped, and some of their N.C.O's were pettily officious and often over ready to take offence. They wore ankle boots with canvas uppers and rubber soles and there was a separate compartment in the canvas for the big toe. It was often startling to meet them on a verandah in a blackout as they moved silently along with fixed bayonet and rifle at the trail. These guards interpreted their own orders in such matters as the amount of lighting allowed during blackouts and the time of our", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207660, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1976", "page_number": 48, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "THE TEOCHIU: ETHNICITY IN URBAN HONG KONG\n\n33\n\nbetween Hong Kong and Thailand was at its height during two periods of several years following the two World Wars. Teochiu import/export firms trading with Thailand established a commercial association in 1946 (Hung, 1961:4). In the 1920s there were at least 21 Teochiu firms involved in trade with Singapore, and in 1930 these firms established a commercial association which by 1951 had 41 member firms (Hung, 1961:2). Teochiu trade between Hong Kong and Vietnam began in the last years of the Ch'ing Dynasty and became substantial in 1914, apparently as a result of World War I. This trading gradually increased until the involvement of the U.S. in the war of liberation at which time the importation of goods into Vietnam from China ceased. This drastically curtailed the importing activities of Teochiu firms in Hong Kong exporting Chinese commodities to Vietnam (Hung, 1961:7).\n\nAfter the opening of Swatow as a treaty port in 1858, Teochiu firms in Hong Kong became active in importing Teochiu products from there and then re-exporting them to Southeast Asia, primarily for Teochiu consumption. In 1946 there were at least 20 firms involved in such trading and by 1948 about 100. Many of these were evidently forced out of business or into other areas of business after 1949, although there were still about 20 firms still involved in Swatow/Southeast Asian trading during the 1950s. These firms were evidently forced to operate with a very low profit margin (Hung, 1961:8).\n\nImmediately prior to World War II there were perhaps 20,000 Teochiu in Hong Kong, many living in Western District. During the 1930s, however, some Teochiu began to move over to the Tsim Sha Tsui district of Kowloon, particularly Haiphong, Hankow and Canton Roads (Lee, 1969:55). Many of these people were employed as coolies in the Kowloon Godown, which still today employs predominantly Teochiu laborers. Most, however, were forced to move out of the area after World War II with the commercial and tourist development of Tsim Sha Tsui.\n\nAnother area of Teochiu concentration prior to World War II was in the hills around Kowloon Walled City where Teochiu squatters raised pigs and poultry (Lee, 1969:56). This early concentration was undoubtedly a factor in the later heavy concentration of Teochiu in Kowloon City in the 1950s and 1960s. By 1961, according to the government census, there were 257,319 Teochiu in Hong Kong and by 1971 the figure", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207801, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1976", "page_number": 189, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "174 \n\nA. D. BLUE \n\nproblems involving steam navigation on the Upper Yangtze may be said to have been solved, or at least understood. Only political unrest, civil wars, and the preoccupation of Britain with the First World War prevented further development.\n\nSzechwan suffered severely from the breakdown of the central government after 1915. At times trade was almost at a standstill because of civil war and organised brigandage, and to a lesser extent because of floods and famines. In spite of this, steam navigation on the Upper Yangtze flourished, a tribute to the keen business instincts and adaptability of the Chinese merchants. The first British steamer to appear on the Upper Yangtze since the Pioneer of 1900 was the Asiatic Petroleum Company's Anlan which went into service in 1918, and was followed in the following year by their Anning.* In addition to carrying petroleum products, these ships carried a few European passengers.\n\nThis heralded a period when there was a great increase in steam navigation on the Upper Yangtze, remarkable in that it took place against a background of continuing and increasing civil war, political unrest, and general trade depression.\n\nOther British companies followed the Asiatic Petroleum Company. In 1919 Mackenzie and Company of Shanghai built the famous Loong Mow at Shanghai's Kiangnan Dockyard, 196.5 feet long by thirty-one feet beam, moulded depth of nine feet six inches and gross registered tonnage of 1,112. The twin reciprocating engines and oil-fired water tube boilers were built by Thorneycroft of Southampton, and the luxurious accommodation for both Chinese and foreign passengers led her to be called \"The Queen of the Gorges\". Soon after this the China Navigation and the Indo-China Steam Navigation Company at last built their own ships for the Upper Yangtze, until then having used chartered junks flying their house flags for their Upper River trade. Then the Stars and Stripes appeared with several Dollar Line ships and some small tankers of the Standard Oil Company; and in 1925 by several steamers of the Yangtze Rapids Steamship Company. For a time this latter company operated a through service between Shanghai and Chungking. French, Italian, and Japanese steamers also appeared at this time. By the end of 1925 there were at least thirty-two steamers on\n\n*This company was the Far Eastern branch of the Shell Company.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207990, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1977", "page_number": 29, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "BRUNEI A HISTORICAL RELIC\n\n13\n\nSultan Dewa Emas Kayangan, mated successively with fourteen aboriginal maidens. After much to-ing and fro-ing the fourteen chose one of their number as leader. When they were all converted to Islam the leader became sultan.\n\nThe chronicles of Brunei which date from perhaps the early 1700s, relate that the first Muslim sultan was installed by the Sultan of Johore. This agrees in general with the theory among historians that Islam spread from centers in Malaya and Sumatra to the eastern archipelago, as far as Mindanao in the Philippines during the 15th century.\n\nIt is interesting to note that among the ruling elite in Brunei there existed an admixture of ethnic origins. For the period of the 14th through the 17th centuries we know that there was much immigration to Borneo from Java, Sumatra, Malaya, China and Arabia. The second sultan was either Chinese or married to a Chinese woman, the daughter of a wealthy Chinese trader who had settled on the northwest coast. Accounts of the injection of Chinese blood into the royal line of Brunei vary. The third sultan was an Arab sharif who married the daughter of the second sultan according to Brunei chronicles. The addition of the blood line of the Prophet to the ruling clan would lend legitimacy to the ruler in Islamic terms. Whether fact or an invention of the royal chronicler it is impossible to verify. Up to contemporary times there have been numerous Arab adventurers living around the coastal regions of the Malay world who denominated themselves sharif - blood descendent of Muhammad.\n\nThe kingdom of Brunei reached its greatest extent of power and prosperity under the fifth and great sultan, Bulkiah, after whom the present, the 29th, sultan is named. Brunei extended its power southward and northeastward around the coasts of Borneo. Bulkiah's forces raided into the Philippines as far as Luzon and left colonies of Brunei Malays on the shores of Manila Bay where they encountered the Spaniards in the middle of the 16th century. The Catholic Spaniards suspected Brunei, probably quite rightly, of being the center of Islamization of the Philippines and so attacked Brunei Town in 1578. Thereafter sporadic warfare continued for over 300 years between Malay Muslim communities of northern Borneo and southern Philippines and the Spanish conquistadores of Manila. This warfare is referred to in Spanish records as the Moro wars.3", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208005, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1977", "page_number": 44, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "28\n\nLEIGH WRIGHT\n\nThe state of Brunei annual report for 1956 describes the water city, Kampong Ayer, this way,\n\nSet in a wide sweep of the river, this river town is in its way unique. At high tide under favourable conditions of light it takes on quite a remarkable beauty; viewed at close quarters it is even more remarkably ramshackle. The houses are grouped together in small villages, being connected by precarious plank walkways, and there the inhabitants carry on their multifarious activities in much the same way as if they were on land.\n\nNOTES\n\n1 See e.g. O. W. Wolters, Early Indonesian Commerce; a study of the origins of Srivijaya, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967); and D. E. Brown, Brunei: the structure and history of a Bornean Malay sultanate, (Brunei: Brunei Museum, 1970).\n\nThese works have drawn upon the earlier studies of such scholars as W. P. Groeneveldt (1880) and Lien Sung (1919).\n\n2 See Brown, op. cit., Ch. XI.\n\n3 The fullest account of the Moro wars is in E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson, The Philippine Islands, 1493 - 1898, (Cleveland, 1903 -09).\n\n4 Lord Stanley of Alderley (ed.), The first voyage round the world by Magellan, by Antonio Pigafetta, (London: Hakluyt Society, 1874).\n\n5 J. Hunt, \"Some particulars relative to the Sulo islands in the Archipelago of Felicia”, in Malayan Miscellany, I, (Bencoolen, 1820).\n\n6 James Horsburgh, Directions for sailing to and from the East Indies and China, (London, 1811), the navigational handbook for generations of British sea captains. This work drew heavily upon the surveys of eighteenth century seafarers such as Alexander Dalrymple (1774) and Thomas Forest (1780).\n\n7 S. B. St. John, Life in the forests of the Far East. (London, 1862), Vol. 2, pp. 248-49.\n\n8 British Parliamentary Papers, 1854-55, XXIX (253),\n\n9 Sarawak Gazette, 26 April, 1872.\n\n10 Henry Keppel, The expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido for the suppression of piracy, with extracts from the Journal of James Brooke, Esq. of Sarawak, (London, 1847),\n\n11 S. Baring-Gould and C. A. Bampfylde, A History of Sarawak under its two white rajahs, (London, 1909), pp. 82-83.\n\n12 Lennox Mills, British Malaya, 1824-67, (reprint: Kuala Lumpur, 1966), p. 248.\n\n13 British interests in Borneo are treated extensively in, L. R. Wright, The Origins of British Borneo, (Hong Kong, 1970).\n\n14 See L. R. Wright, \"The Foreign Office and North Borneo\", in Journal of Oriental Studies, Vol. VII, No. 1, (January 1969).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208116, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1977", "page_number": 155, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "CHEUNG CHOW LONG ISLAND\n\n-\n\n139\n\nwith a deft sweep of the foot, does one see more than an ankle.\n\nOur friend on the other side is not so particular. He sits in the open space between two counters of his shop, and having rolled his cotton singlet up into his armpits, fans with languid strokes a portly form, naked to a very low waist. Now the road begins to widen. It is almost four strides across at this point, owing no doubt to the zeal of some P.W.D. official, but as the extra width is entirely taken up with stalls extended from the shops, no loss of custom can be said to result.\n\nWe have come through a crowded street, and not seen a scowl or a frown, not been jostled, or hustled. The sweating burdened porters have been given right of way, politely asked for, and as graciously conceded. For in China men respect the burden. There are no cars or even bicycles to upset the stream, but if a European, in the usual hurry to leave a boat or catch a boat walks rapidly through the street, there is sometimes a little awkward eddy in the stream, and people have to step aside into shops while the impatient one passes. Not that the Europeans push or rudely press, for there is perfect good temper, and understanding on both sides; but distinguished foreigners in all countries are apt to be in a hurry, one has to help them on their way.\n\nNow we are in the market place... rows of stalls covered with canvas shades set forth cigarettes and sweets, vegetables, fish and meat. Cooked food is here in plenty, steaming soups and succulent pork: cheap Japanese matches, cottons and tin and hardware: but above all, food. The Chinese like to snatch a snack now and then between the main meals. Many coolies feed entirely on snacks obtained at these stalls, drink a cup of tea, take a cake or a bowl of rice, and put down a few cents before they gird up their loins and pass on to the next task. There is also a restaurant of two storeys here, overlooking the pier, the first storey buttressed by barbers' parlours, resplendent with mirrors and American barbers' chairs made in Canton. This is the Cantonese or Punti ward, here in the centre where drapers' shops, and chandlers, the pawnshop and houses are thickest. The Punti is one of the world's best traders and financiers within his own range, and it is here or hereabouts that the village magnates live and work. Here are the money lenders and fish merchants, the landlords and rulers of the people, the mortgage holders for whom the fishermen mostly work. This is the down town section, and the operations are probably", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208990, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1980", "page_number": 152, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "120\n\nBARBARA E. WARD\n\nthe interest nor the techniques were available to study that other side of Chinese society which in fact was the experience of more than 90% of the population—the rural villages, small and large market towns, peasants, artisans, small tradesmen, fishermen and so on: in other words, the Little Traditions that were of course just as much part of the whole entity which was China, and without which the elite section would not have existed at all. After about 1920, interests changed a good deal in China, as elsewhere, and at about the same time anthropological and sociological techniques for studying the Little Traditions of the world began to be developed, but by the time that Wu Wen-tsao, Fei Hsiao-t'ung, Francis Hsu and their colleagues started to use the new techniques in the mid—and late thirties it was already very late. Despite the appalling conditions of national and civil wars they did a remarkable amount of work. Without it we should be immeasurably poorer than we are; but inevitably they could only cover a relatively small part of the vast whole before 1949.\n\nTo-day Mainland China is completely closed to the kind of prolonged, detailed, intimate study that classical anthropological fieldwork depends upon. Virtually no-one, not even Mainland Chinese themselves, has been able to do this kind of work since 1949, nor, in my opinion is it at all likely that it will become possible for very many years to come. (It is necessary to add that, of course, China does not stand alone in this prohibition; for what are in every case held to be good political reasons, the lights are going out for this kind of study in many, many parts of the world at present.) The result as far as Mainland China is concerned is that it will now never be possible to recover in detail the social and cultural heritage of what I have just referred to as the Little Traditions. The saddest words in all human languages have to be said—it is too late.\n\nThus only Hong Kong and Taiwan remain, and Dr. Wang Sung-hsing has just told how in his view Hong Kong is now the more valuable for this kind of recovery work and no-one in the world is better placed to know.\n\n—\n\nWe may ask why are the New Territories still so rich in this way? It is, when you think of it a very odd thing! Surely two of the strangest outcomes of the history of opium wars and Western imperialism are, first, that Hong Kong to-day is one of the rather", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209001, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1980", "page_number": 163, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n131\n\nThe Chinese are both adept at make-believe and at the same time very practical—in a way that confuses some Westerners. This flexibility also creates problems for the government of Teng Hsiao-p'ing. I have heard these problems talked about inside China and outside China. The most serious problem is that mid-level cadres report to Peking only what they think will please the orthocrats there. Therefore mid-level cadres conceal from their superiors the fact that a target has not been met. They do not want to be criticized for not meeting targets—and perhaps lose some of their perks.\n\nIn Peking the perquisites of cadres struck me more than anywhere else. I did not myself see the special schools that their children attend; nor their superior places of residence. What I did see once was a procession of about fifty cars, each with its curtains drawn as if to shield the occupants from curious gazes. I was told that the wife of the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka was visiting Peking. The first of several of the cars in the cavalcade were flying national flags as they went past me on Ch'ang-an Boulevard. Ambassadors rode in them.\n\nAfterwards I was walking back to the Peking Hotel, where I lived not in the western part (built with Russian help), but in the eastern part built in 1975. I happened to look in a gateway on the south side of Ch'ang-an Boulevard. I could hardly believe my eyes. What I think I saw was a white marble statue of Stalin, about ten feet tall. I could not enter the courtyard and inspect the statue more closely because the sign at the gate informed me that this was the headquarters of the Ministry of Public Security.\n\nThe Chinese government is now revealing that many of the statistics released in 1958-1976 were erroneous. It is issuing corrections when it can. But it faces limits. For example, how can it state with certainty the approximate population of the world's most populous country? Cadres in distant areas may be reluctant to report that they have failed to carry out the program to stop married couples from having more than three children. Many peasant families still believe that the best old-age insurance is a larger number of children. Where they feel this way and have four or more children, the village cadre may be reluctant to report the fact to the county cadre; and the ascending accumulation of errors may be concealed from Peking. If Peking does not know the population of an area, it cannot plan to take adequate measures in case of drought—like the one in Kansu, for example, in 1979.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209163, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1981", "page_number": 66, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "52 \n\nHUBERT SEIWERT \n\nof fu-luan cults in Taiwan in recent years?\". \n\nThere are many links between fu-luan cults and practices and the I-kuan Tao sect. Most of the texts which expose the teachings of this sect have been revealed by \"spirit-writing\" since the beginning of the sect in the nineteenth century28. Fu-luan sessions are held regularly, normally four times a year?, during which new revelations and instructions are received. Furthermore, the content of the teachings which are propagated by I-kuan Tao show strong similarities to those of many of the common fu-luan cults10. This is the case especially where the religious interpretation of the present time, the assessment of the historical role of the Chinese tradition and the confrontation with Western influence is concerned. It is these elements of the beliefs which show most clearly the popular religious responses to the modernization process. \n\nReligious interpretation of the present time: traditionalism \n\nTo illustrate some basic elements of the world-view of these cults I quote a few passages from a revelation of the god Shang Ti which was given during a fu-luan session in 1977: \n\nFrom 1914 to 1939 two world wars broke out. As a result the correct truth was almost eradicated and the traditional culture went up in flames. Streams of blood were shed and millions of corpses covered the earth. Wives were separated from their husbands and their sons scattered to the four winds, unbearable was the misery. If this happens again, if a third world war breaks out, mankind will face destruction. For the military weapons which are developed by the modern sciences are being improved day by day, nuclear weapons are perfected day and night. In such a situation we must give up our hope for the Great Harmony and the peace in the world. Therefore, there is only one way, if we want to avoid the final catastrophe: the original orthodox tradition of the Tao which our Chinese nation possesses has to be restored. The four social relations (szu wei9) and the eight virtues (pa teλ) [must be put into practice again]. We must continue the past in order to save the future, that means to follow the orthodox tradition of the Tao which has been transmitted from Yao, Shun, Yü, T’ang, Wen Wang and Wu Wang, Confucius and Mencius. Only in this way can one escape this huge cosmic catastrophe.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209237, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1981", "page_number": 140, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "126\n\nTA ACTON\n\n+\n\nan oppressed and pariah people without social status.\n\n20\n\nIt must be emphasized that this picture of an ethnic group with a long history was not the image of a few scholars only. It was the socially constructed reality of pre-1939 China. Even though since the mid-1950s modern scholarship and the views of the officials most directly concerned, both in the People's Republic of China21 and in Hong Kong have demolished it as though it had never been, it lingers among ordinary people and even some British officials not directly concerned.\n\n22\n\n23\n\n26\n\nFrom the early 1950s one British social-anthropologist, Barbara Ward, has carried out recurrent field-work on a community of the kind that used to be called 'Tanka', on the little island of Kau Sai.29 She found that with minor exceptions they were ethnically Cantonese, with similar models of the world, marriage and death practices, and religious beliefs to other Han Chinese.24 Other scholars endorsed her view; even their language, apart from an enormous, specialised fishing vocabulary was said to be virtually the same as ordinary Cantonese. In fact, Hong Kong fishing people in the larger ports can tell each others' origins partly by the fact that they speak with different, local coastal accents - for example, a 'Yeung Kong' accent.;\n\n26\n\n27\n\nOfficial policy in Hong Kong also now sees the boat-people as an occupational, and not an ethnic group, whereas the British Government in Britain sees the Gypsies now as an ethnic and not an occupational group, both viewpoints having reversed themselves over the past thirty years.\n\n28\n\nIt should be emphasized, though, that these perceptions of ethnicity, whatever relation they may have to the form and organisation of education (and the vigour with which it is pursued), do not usually affect the content of special educational provision by the state, for either group. Both the curriculum and language remains that of the ordinary school, and the amount of exotic cultural material included is meagre. Despite some pioneering work by voluntary projects, the Gypsy dialects are not used in the West Midlands Local Authority projects, and \"Gypsy material\" is limited to commercially published books featuring Gypsies, and the occasional pasted cardboard caravan. Equally, in the F.MO. schools in Hong Kong, one might find general readers, with a carefully laudatory couple of pages on the brave fishermen, or, once or twice, beautiful collections of strange fish and other marine creatures in jars, that have been contributed by parents; but the main task was to give them the same education other Chinese children received.\n\n29", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209500, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1982", "page_number": 157, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "135\n\n1911.40 After the First World War, the number had risen to over 2,000. (These figures do not include several thousand seamen, mostly firemen, stokers and stewards, without permanent domicile). At the beginning of the century, it is claimed, Chinese tended to ‘avoid Scotland and Wales', but were strongly attracted to London, especially Limehouse. With such small numbers present in Britain, it seems certain British judges and lawyers rarely came in contact with Chinese, only very occasionally perhaps in certain Liverpool or London courts; but never, one surmises, in normal social intercourse. In the 1920s, then, the Chinese in Britain were still a mysterious, but minute, social entity, habitually caricatured in the press and by novelists as 'vellee' strange people who spoke a particularly difficult and dissonant language and wrote, as Dr. Johnson noted, a script that was perversely pictorial to alphabet-lovers. Even professors of Chinese, sinologues and sinologists, were regarded at that time with as much wry amusement as were Assyriologists or Egyptologists, seekers after equally rarefied knowledge of no great practical importance.\n\n47\n\nThe first mass movement of Chinese to the outside world occurred in the nineteenth century. It was mostly 'coolie emigration', to use Campbell's descriptive term, the drift of mainly uneducated and relatively unskilled, though hard-working, Chinese to places where opportunities appeared to be brighter than in the homeland (a territory then much wracked by rebellion, foreign wars, famine and other afflictions). Lock Ah Tam, as mentioned above, is representative of the first wave, an emigrant who did well in his adopted country. As China was forced reluctantly into the modern world and into normal diplomatic relations with foreign powers, a different type of Chinese was becoming known abroad — the educated Chinese, a member of the 'Mandarin class', as Europeans were wont to describe him. In 1876 Kuo Sung-tao was appointed as the first Chinese minister in England.18 A Legation was then established in London, in 1877, with a normal complement of officials and secretaries. Chinese diplomatic staff became a common sight in Whitehall although, until the 1911 Revolution, most wore traditional Chinese attire and sported the queue. (After 1911, they took to frock-coat and top-hat and adopted European hair-styles).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210284, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1984", "page_number": 255, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "234\n\nCHOI CHI CHEUNG\n\nof water (Kan Lu #), the chief priest passed the dish to the priest on his right-hand side, who then used a small pine leaf to sprinkle water as he walked through the festival area himself. (See routes 1 and 2 in the plan of the Festival Area at the Appendix to this article.) The participating worshippers regarded the former walking ritual as one to show respect to their 'Ancestors', and the latter one as a kind of offering and purification of the area.\n\n13\n\nThe 'Reporting' ritual, which took place between entrance A and entrance C, started with the throwing of several Man Tau (Man-Juu in Japanese, a kind of bread) and ten-yen coins to those attending. It created a lot of excitement among those attending as well as the priests. Then the chief priest, who was standing on a table, read a Pang (a name list =, yellow in colour, which was burnt on the last night) of 165 names, and then a Shi-ma (a paper-made figure riding on a paper-made horse), the supposed messenger to Heaven, was burnt with paper money and incense sticks. The 'messenger' was to report to Heaven that this place was now holding a festival for (a) all the soldiers who died during the World Wars, (b) the Ancestors of all surnames, and (c) all wandering spirits. It was hoped that through this generous offering (Gong De), the worshippers could obtain family happiness and good luck.\n\n=\n\n16\n\n=\n\n17\n\n#3). At about 3 p.m. on Sept. 2, a bus took fifteen Hokkienese committee members (including 3 females, 1 boy, 2 youths in their 20s) and six priests to the Shumanoura beach, which is in Hyogo Prefecture. There, 21 lotus lanterns (Lien Dan, each with a burning candle inside) were sent out to sea. At the same time, two women put 60 sets of 3 small incense sticks and 2 sets of 3 middle-sized incense sticks into the sand, while the priests chanted facing the sea. After that, the committee members threw vegetarian food around the site. The whole ritual took fifteen minutes. The ritual, according to the Japanese priest, was to send off the ghosts and the ancestors, and some committee members said that it was to send off the orphan ghosts (Wu Zhi Gui 無杞鬼 = Muen butsu in Japanese, meaning ghosts which have no worshippers).\n\nDuring the night offerings, the chief priest first made some\n\nPage 255\n\nPage 256", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210291, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1984", "page_number": 262, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "241\n\ning here and not give them trouble\". According to the introduction in the Pang (see Appendix), as posted up at the main entrance, \"the festival was held for the purpose of assisting the reincarnation of i) the soldiers who died during the world wars, ii) the ancestors of all surnames, and iii) the ghosts who were not worshipped by anyone. And it was hoped that through the mediation of the priests, the Three Buddhas and all the spirits would give their permission and open the door for them to cross-over and become human beings again. However, the worshippers, being more interested in self-prosperity, were more concerned about their own ancestors who are the only ones who can guarantee their prosperity.\n\nV. Conclusion; History of the Festival in Kobe\n\n34\n\nAccording to an appeal to the Hyogo Government in 1873, the Ningpo merchants were the first to hold a Ghost Festival for the Chinese in Kobe. Mr. Chan (70 years old, Cantonese, born and educated in Kobe, now vice-president of the History Museum of the Kobe Chinese) told me that before the Second World War, the festival was organized by the Cantonese who then out-numbered the Hokkienese. The Cantonese were wealthier and 'had more knowledge'. Mr. Chan continued to tell me that during that time the Hokkienese were relatively poor. They were mostly travelling merchants (f). They therefore had no stable residential place neither were they economically strong enough to be the organizers of the festival. Though there was a bachelor-centre for about 17 Hokkienese laborers in Nagoya about 30 years ago, there was no Hokkienese cluster in Kobe. Today, however all the three Chinese Ghost Festivals in Japan are organised by the Hokkienese\". Mr. Chan's narration agrees with the information given by Li Ta-shen.36 The Hokkienese, now organisers of the Festival, had never been an influential group until the end of the Second World War. However, since then, until 1978, the Hokkienese were said to be the centre of the Kobe festival.37\n\nDue to the anti-Chinese incident in Kobe in 1976, the Chinese started to pursue unification among all the different Chinese territorial groups, and to disregard their origins. In 1978, the Kobe Chinese News (US) was changed to the Kansai Chi-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211011, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1987", "page_number": 73, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "48\n\n6\n\neral trends. More recent work, such as Clive Whitehead's, also critical of the generalisations of Carnoy, is based on an examination of the processes of policy-making, largely at the macro-level.' Whitehead seeks to use a fascinating combination of official archives and personal papers to suggest that there was no consistent and overriding policy of cultural imperialism in or for the British Colonial Empire between the two World Wars. Yet in the final analysis, Whitehead's conclusion, as convincing as it appears, is also the result of a quest for an overview.\n\nThe problem with overviews is that too much may be left out of sharp focus. The problem with a priori reasoning, based upon stipulated conceptual premises is that it may distort, in a Procrustean manner, the local reality. This article demonstrates an alternative to the macro, deductive approach in the belief that, on occasions, such an approach tends to tailor the facts to suit the concepts. This article adopts, instead, the inductive and discursive mode of an historian towards an aspect of formal and informal education in Hong Kong which has extraordinary importance and considerable emotive content — language learning. It examines neither the officially pronounced policy intentions of the Government nor the polemics of pressure groups, but a simple book and its author. This strategy is adopted on the grounds that an attempt to understand an author and his book may provide a small collection of interesting \"snapshots\" from the social history of education in Hong Kong, and that snapshots can be as valid and worthwhile a form of delineation as overviews. This opinion (or view) is advanced largely on pragmatic grounds and in the personal belief that much information can be gathered from an examination of snapshots, though Structuralist arguments in favour of synchronic analyses could also be enlisted. Neither type of argument dismisses the value of overviews completely. Both arguments depend to some extent on the existence of a series of snapshots, which can be argued to be representative. Assuming at least two, it may be possible to use the synchronic analyses for \"before/after\" or other illuminating contrasts.\"\n\nThe snapshots about to be displayed may be examined for the evidence they offer about social structures and relationships in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211347, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1988", "page_number": 63, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "39\n\nof the past showed that mo was a grey and white mammal with black limbs, thick hide and short hair. It ate leaves and fruit, was said to be tame, slept by day and roamed about by night. Unfortunately, however, this animal turned out to be a native of Malaya, Java and South America, but was unknown in China. Further investigations found it to be a member of the tapir family, Tapirus indicus, thus not a panda at all.\n\nThe other version of the animal called mo offered more possibilities. A monumental work compiled by Li Shizhen (1518-1593) during the sixteenth century, Studies of Animals, Minerals and Plants, a compendium that was a great deal more than a mere pharmacopoeia, had included all information on the world of nature Li had found in ancient Chinese texts as well as data he had gathered on his own. This work and its contents had been known through the scholarly world in Asia and Europe since its publication. A copy had been brought to Japan and made available to scholars there. Several editions in Japanese were subsequently published. The contents were included in Juan Gonzalez de Mendoza's Historia, which was printed in Rome in 1585. (This work, incidentally, was brought back into China by Portuguese missionaries in a later century). Further, the Historia was translated into English in 1588 as Historie of the Great and Mightie Kingdom of China, Part I, Book III, Chapter XII.\n\nEven better for scholars in search of an ancestor of the modern giant panda, the mo in Li's work was a native of Sichuan. It subsisted on a diet of bamboo and plantain.\n\nOnly, alas, its colouring was said to be yellow and black.\n\nOf more comfort, on the other hand, were Erya and the Book of Odes. Both proclaimed the mo to be a \"white and black leopard, resembling a white bear with a small head and large body, which licks plantain plants but eats exclusively bamboo\". Despite several contradictions in this definition, it was possible to think of the mo as the giant panda, with certain reservations, of course.\n\nProblems arose when an illustration in the Synthesis of Books and Illustrations showed the mo to be a rather fantastic being with spotted body, long limbs, wolf's ears and a trunk like an elephant. This version", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211522, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1988", "page_number": 239, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "215\n\n2. Hera was the sister-wife of Zeus, queen of the Olympian gods.\n\n3. The dolphin is a symbol of rescue: the dolphin is a friendly animal; it saves sea-farers. It also has a public connotation: the emblems of love to Ceres comprise a column and a dolphin.\n\n4. The letter K is the first letter of the inscription KYAIX found on the original gold coins.\n\n5. Kastor or Castor and Pollux are twin deities, Dioscouroi, DIO KOYPOI sons of Leda and Zeus. Castor was renowned as a horseman and Pollux as a wrestler. As deities they were famed for rescuing shipwrecked sailors. They were also called Polydeuces in Sparta.\n\n6. The letters ATOA are an abbreviation for AПOAAØN i.e. Jupiter, hence the thunderbolt, the symbol of his power.\n\nHistory\n\nAbout the year 706 B.C., during the 8th century, Greeks from Sparta and Laconia occupied the village of Taras on the river of the same name and founded the city of Taras. It lasted till 209 B.C. when it was captured by Fabius Maximus. From the widespread use of its coinage can be ascertained its great influence in history. The Tarentines founded a number of other cities on the Adriatic: Hydrus (Otranto), Heraclea (in Lucania) and Gallipoli (Gallipol) on the Dardanelles. Mention of Tarentum is to be found in several ancient writers.\n\nHellenic Culture in the Ancient World\n\nIn historic times the \"Yavans\" (Sanskrit word for Greek with reference to Ionians) were to be found everywhere in the East from the 7th century B.C. onwards. They were merchants, architects, soldiers, artisans, advisers, etc. (e.g. Greek mercenaries under Psammetichus, Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus, Darius, etc., Artisans for Darius, Hystaspes etc.)\n\nThe original coin was dated between 344 and 334 B.C., i.e. before Alexander the Great had crossed the Indus in 326 to invade India. But in the 5th century a series of events increased East-West relations considerably, namely, the Persian Wars. The result of these events was that Persians had learned to fear and respect Greek power. Hostilities gave place to friendly relations, based on gold and diplomacy. They", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211636, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1989", "page_number": 51, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "26\n\nthe destinies of mankind on behalf of the Jade Emperor.\n\nImages of four of his 36 ministers are to be seen with him on several altars. They are:\n\nHsu Chenjen (許眞人)\n\nSa Chenjen (薩眞人) both on his right hand, and\n\nChang Chenjen (張眞人)\n\nKo Chenjen (葛眞人) both on his left hand.\n\nTheir collective title is Hsu Lung Chang Ko Ssu Chenjen (許呂張葛四眞人).\n\nPopular versions of the deification of the Jade Emperor are no more than an echo of the stories related by tea house story tellers who, in turn, came by many of the stories from the Ming dynasty book containing a collection of myths describing the wars which ended in the fall of the Shang dynasty and its replacement by the victorious Chou, \"The Deification of the Gods' (Feng Shen Pang). The collection, also known as the Feng Shen Yen I, describes the appointment of the Jade Emperor by Chiang Tzu-ya, the Prime Minister of the Chou, in about 1180 BC. Chiang had appointed the majority of the heroes who had lost their lives in the wars to overthrow the Shang tyrant to fill vacancies in the bureaucracy of the spirit world with only one post left unfilled, that of the Supreme Deity, the Jade Emperor, which Chiang had been reserving for himself. When he was offered the post, with customary courtesy he paused and asked people to 'wait a second' (Teng lai) whilst he considered. However, having called out \"Teng lai', an opportunist, Chang Teng-lai, hearing his name, stepped forward, prostrated himself and thanked Chiang for creating him the Jade Emperor. Chiang Tzu-ya, stupefied, was unable to retract his words. However, in tense anger he quietly cursed Chang Teng-lai, ‘Your sons will become thieves and your daughters prostitutes!' Chang Teng-lai became the Jade Emperor but was unable to prevent the curse from working. The sons, in the Feng Shen Pang, planned to steal Buddha's lotus throne, but omniscient Buddha trapped them with his fingers and enslaved them under a pagoda. Despite this human origin, and his apparent lack of qualifications for the post of Supreme Deity in the pantheon, he is above all other spirits in the Taoist and folk religion pantheon and is a distant deity to whom all others must pay their respect.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212125, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1990", "page_number": 67, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "THE 'SYRIAN BRILLIANT TEACHING’\n\nDAVID WILMSHURST\n\nIntroduction\n\nFew Christians nowadays outside the Middle East are familiar with the name, let alone the history, of the Nestorian church of Persia, yet between the ninth and fourteenth centuries it was in some respects perhaps the largest Christian church in the world, with bishoprics stretching from the Mediterranean right across Asia to China. The church took its name from Nestorius, who became archbishop of Constantinople in 428 and was deposed not long afterwards for holding heretical views on the nature of Christ. Nestorius placed great stress on the human nature of Jesus, and tried to discourage the use in the churches under his jurisdiction of the title Theotokos, 'mother of God', a term which had long been applied to the Virgin Mary. To his enemies, he appeared to be denying the divinity of Christ, and regarding him as a mere man who had been adopted by God as his son, though it is now clear that his views were considerably closer to the orthodox position than he was given credit for at the time. A heated controversy ensued, and both sides in the dispute supported their arguments with bribery and intimidation. The opposition to Nestorius was led by Cyril, archbishop of Alexandria, who was motivated partly by a genuine distaste for his opponent's theology and partly by jealousy of his ecclesiastical status. Cyril finally procured the deposition and banishment of Nestorius at the Council of Ephesus in 431.\n\nIn the next century and a half the Nestorian heresy was stamped out within the territories of the Roman empire, and its adherents fled to neighbouring Persia. Although the state religion of Sassanian Persia was Zoroastrianism, Christianity had firmly established itself in the western provinces of the Persian empire, particularly among the mainly Syrian population of northern Mesopotamia and in Khuzistan and Fars, and Persia's Christian minority by and large sympathised with the theological position which Nestorius had taken. The influx of Christian refugees from the Roman empire strengthened the native Persian church, and after the Persian empire was conquered by the Moslem Arabs in the seventh century the Nestorian church enjoyed a period of rapid expansion. Syrian and Persian Christians were tolerated by their Moslem rulers and organised into a melet, or official minority", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212216, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1990", "page_number": 158, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "135\n\nPolice Station, and were allocated various districts to patrol. We worked in pairs. Sometimes a regular French policeman accompanied us, in addition to several Chinese constables of the French Police Force. We would walk along as the spirit moved us; and on arriving at a cross-roads would take up a position in the middle of the street, cock our pistols, and stop all cars to look inside them. The idea of this was to catch kidnappers, as they usually carried off their gagged victims by car. One day we stopped a large car, only to find the venerable Mr. Yu Ya Ching in it. He was the senior of the five Chinese representatives on the Municipal Council. I do not know who was the more astonished, he or we! On another occasion when we looked into a car we found a complete thuggery of Russian gunmen; there is a large White Russian community in Shanghai, a survival of the Russian revolution, and many of the men were engaged by rich Chinese as bodyguards. They looked ugly, as if they were more used to holding people up themselves than being held up. The next car turned out to contain the puppet Mayor of the Chinese Municipality, who durst not venture abroad without a heavy escort. All passed off with mutual compliments. In my time we fortunately never ran into a real gangster: I have difficulty in hitting a haystack even with a snug little weapon, let alone with so heavy a piece of ancient ironmongery.\n\nUntil about 10 p.m. a heavy traffic would continue in the Avenue Joffre, the main highway on our beat. Sometimes, when we went out on bicycles, a form of sport to which I had been unaccustomed for at least a quarter of a century. I found it rather tricky moving in patrol formation amidst the traffic. If we came across an obstreperous drunk, we would turn tactfully in the opposite direction. It at least gave the Chinese some confidence to see armed foreign patrols out at night, a confidence which, I fear, may have been exaggerated. Sometimes we would stand at the corner of the street, at about the time the cinemas came out, and watch our families go home; and, when the time was up, we might go into that little bar on the ground floor of the Cathay Mansions for a bottle of \"Ewo\" Beer.\n\nAt the police station the French Municipality provided sandwiches, crumbly French rolls split in half, buttered, and holding a slice of ham, which we would munch, while our leader made his report. Then early in the morning we would go home, feeling we had earned our sleep.\n\nThe cinemas of Shanghai are as luxurious as any in the world.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212272, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1990", "page_number": 214, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "191\n\nSeveral levels of influence on Legge's approach to the Chinese classics can be associated with his intimate knowledge of Buchanan's History of Scotland.\n\nIt is, for instance, possible to identify in Legge a particular view of history, which he had received from Buchanan's portrayal of Scottish history. Buchanan was aware of both the tenuous nature of the Scottish monarchy and the military might of the English. He searched through the most ancient Latin texts in order to identify sources for facts and issues almost completely lost by his contemporaries. In doing so, he set standards for the critical assessment of ancient manuscripts, consequently creating a chronological reconstruction of Scottish history. In Legge's scholarly reconstruction of the dynastic histories of China we find the same concern for reliability of texts, long prolegomena which attempt to splice together the missing pieces, and a relentless standard which distinguished myth from historical event.\n\nStill there was more than this in The History of Scotland: it is full of the accounts of clan wars, the complexities of international politics, and the heroes of the nation. Could it be that these were reflected in Legge's approach to Chinese history as he was drawn into the ducal duels and internecine warfare of The Spring and Autumn Annals (IBPA) and its commentaries? There is a remarkable concurrence between the Warring States period of China and the battles of Scottish patriots in the formative years before union with England.\n\nTwo further dimensions of Buchanan's life and efforts are of interest: first, Buchanan's concern to revitalize the old medieval Latin tradition by an intimate knowledge of the classics and to apply lessons learned from the classics to his own time; secondly, the fact that this Catholic scholar later converted to Calvinism. Cherishing the classics was, for both Christian Latinists and Confucians, a means of gaining wisdom to live in a dynamically changing world. At Oxford Legge would reveal his great admiration and interest in the Tang dynasty scholar, Han Yu (768-824), having recognized in Han Yu this same concern to cherish \"old\" knowledge in order to acquire new knowledge. Furthermore, Han Yu was a kind of Confucian fundamentalist, using his renaissance of past wisdom to effect direct intellectual and political renewal.\n\nTT\n\nProtestant conversion in the sixteenth century demanded as drastic", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212572, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1991", "page_number": 126, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "106\n\nunique practices as do, for instance, the Hakka, Chiu Chau and the boat people. Northern Chinese have no 'second burial' after exhumation as do southerners. Indeed funeral conventions sometimes vary slightly from village to village. Some believe that a menstruating woman must not touch a corpse as she is ‘unclean”. Men, as a sign of respect, may comb their dead wife's hair.\n\nIn Hong Kong there has been considerable merging of customs by different regional Chinese groups, but the focus is still, especially for Cantonese, on veneration of ancestors. This has been construed as meaning, if the living pay sufficient respect to the dead they will, in return, exert benevolence over the lives and prosperity of present and future family members. Ancestor worship is practised in several countries especially where communities are composed of kin groups believed to be descended from common ancestors, like the Five Great Clans of the New Territories. Christian churches have difficulty accepting the word 'worship' and prefer the term 'ancestor reverence.' Filial piety has been described as the most powerful force in China for the past 3,000 years. Probably nowhere are family records as meticulously kept as in China.\n\nReturning to the case study, while the deceased was alive, a western-trained Chinese physician suggested that she undergo an operation. She refused. Going 'intact' into the next world is still considered important by many. Thus Chinese medicine, with little emphasis on surgery, is not infrequently preferred to western medicine. This follows the Confucian dictum: 'One should not inflict harm on one's body, not even hair and skin because they were inherited from one's parents' (ADZ 膚,受之父母,不敢毀傷).\n\nThe human body is a sacred treasure which must not be marred by surgical incision.\" Eunuchs in Imperial China kept their castrated private parts in jars to be buried with them on their death. Not until 22 November, 1913, did an official edict in China grant permission for autopsies. The great shame with beheading was to have a dismembered body.\n\nIn Hong Kong, up to the 1950s and even later, if a patient had an operation and then died, some families would request that any removed organs be buried with the 'heavenly body'.\" Today, patients expect to be told whether something was removed during an operation. Donating of organs, such as kidneys for transplants or removing a beating heart,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212578, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1991", "page_number": 132, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "112\n\n20\n\nA one-inch diameter, ancient bronze-coin, costing $60, with a 1/4-inch square hole in the centre (a pearl or jade object is sometimes used instead), had been placed in the mouth of the corpse. This practice can be traced back to Liangzhu culture in ancient China 3,900 to 4,900 years ago. The purpose of this talisman is to deter evil, to prevent body spirits escaping before purification and to safeguard the corpse against rapid decay.\n\nIt was expected that the dead person's spirit would come to the funeral parlour. There were two bowls of peanut oil with a wick made from dried seaweed in the farewell room, 'to lead her on her way'. A packet of cooked rice and a pair of chopsticks lay on the floor to placate fierce dogs which she would meet three weeks after death on the road to heaven. Possessions she treasured, such as special clothes, a cassette of Chinese songs and her handbag with knickknacks, including magnifying glass, cigarettes, lipstick, compact and a piece of jade, were placed in the coffin. Coffin jade, which has been reclaimed after many years of burial, is valued for 'protective' properties. For practical reasons keys and a notebook, which contained telephone numbers, were not placed in the casket. Nor were spectacles. Cremation would splinter them and they could injure the corpse although there seems to be a contradiction here with the magnifying glass.\n\nAlso at the back of the hall, on the left of the altar, was a stove around which relatives and close friends, including children, folded 'gold' and 'silver ingots' out of tin-foil. These imitation bars, together with pieces of paper resembling bank notes (a tale has it that a little boy once found one and went to the bank to try to cash it), were burned continuously until midnight. Money is needed by the dead, among other purposes, to bribe officials to obtain good positions in the after-world. Five Buddhist nuns with shaved heads and colourful robes chanted prayers. One had a series of initiation, incense stick burn marks on her scalp.22\n\n21\n\nChinese children take part in funerals, and, with the extended family, it is important they 'farewell the dead'. This appears in no way traumatic. With English funerals children tend not to participate. Certainly with the author's generation (pre-World War II) death was a taboo subject for the young.\n\nA Chinese saying has it:", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212590, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1991", "page_number": 144, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "124\n\nniches. If this happened, one bowed and apologised aloud to the spirits.\n\nThe ceremony was conducted by a Taoist brother who carefully poured the ashes through a white cloth folded in the neck of a funnel. The deceased's gold bracelet together with a piece of jade were also deposited in the urn. The top was tied on with red ribbon. Her name was written on the outside of the urn with red paint, 'free hand' (without butt of hand resting on anything). The Taoist painted fine characters although he professed to have had little schooling. After mourners bowed three times flowers were arranged in vases. Paper rosettes were burned. Also, two tables were placed in front of the two niches and a feast, including fruit, cakes and rice wine, was laid out. The two urns, each covered in white cloth, were then inserted in their respective niches, the doors were sealed with plaster and more joss sticks and yellow rosettes were burned. The six mourners then lined up, recited Buddhist prayers and received lucky packets. It was necessary for the Chinese candles to burn out before bowing goodbye and leaving the columbarium for a late, 4.00 pm, vegetarian 'lunch'.\n\nSixth Tsat\n\nAlthough official ceremonies ended with the fifth, the family paid a further visit to Ching Chung Koon, where the ashes are kept, on the sixth tsat. Joss sticks in clusters of three (one each for heaven, earth and mankind), paper 'gold bars' and a large rosette made up of coloured paper were burned. These eight-inch squares of yellow paper had been 'blessed' by an old woman. She meticulously burnt a hole in the centre of each single sheet with a joss stick. Also, single joss sticks were placed in all vases for other souls in that room of the temple.\n\nCharity\n\nAt this stage, the three daughters were informed by a fortune teller that, for their mother to enter kik lok shai kaai (extremely happy world) it would help if they performed some charitable deeds. A donation of $2,000 was made to a poor, elderly watchman to help with medical expenses. 'Give to a charitable organisation, with heavy overheads, there is no telling where the money goes,' one daughter said.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212957, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1993", "page_number": 25, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "position, to avoid total loss of face for them.\n\nIt has been pointed out by Elizabeth Croll that the party cadres were very much concerned about the scale of wedding banquets which was a symbol of their status and a means to induce favourable attitudes from others. However, these incidents had been condemned by the government-controlled media, and face had been denounced as belonging to the lot of feudal ills which had to be discontinued in the socialist era (Croll, 1981: 124-126). Surprisingly, despite this denunciation, the concept of face or the word itself did not disappear altogether in the press. As a matter of fact, it was even being directly used by government officials and the government media,\n\nOn 19 May 1985, the Chinese soccer team lost to Hong Kong in a World Cup Qualifying Round match. Afterwards, members of the crowd leaving the Beijing Workers' Stadium damaged public properties. They even attacked foreigners, their cars and shouted at them in the capital's streets. News reports and comments which covered this event accused those who created disorder as losing the nation's face.\" While there are direct proofs of the existence of \"face\" in these \"slips-of-the-tongue\", the question as to how much has been swallowed up or how much has been concealed awaits investigation,\n\nNot only was the nation's face being at stake amidst outbursts of hooliganism, but also in terms of economic activities. GNP figures have been low in China, at least not compatible with a big country. The face of the country, the government and her people, was challenged and threatened in view of the growing strength of other countries. This put China into a dilemma. On the one hand, she could not deny the success of other countries, but on the other, she could not sink behind them or lose face before them due to her sense of national superiority (Hsu, 1981: 411).\n\nTo maintain that China was still a great country, a superior nation under the Communists, the burden was put on the media. Figures in bicycle production in China and India, a rather trivial topic, had been compared to highlight the former's success.\" These types of contents were badly needed in view of the growing exposure of Chinese people to Western products and achievements (Funadashi, 1985: 232).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213162, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1993", "page_number": 230, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "212\n\nIn 1914, the opium concession had been taken over by the Hong Kong Government and a policy for the discontinuance of the trade was pursued. But its use was not fully prohibited until after World War II,\n\nIt must be stressed that much of the information recorded in this short paper was by word of mouth. Over time facts can, of course, become distorted.\n\nHong Kong was affected directly but little by the First World War. 'But there were great celebrations, a two-day public holiday, a victory parade and a fireworks display (which cost HK$2,000) when it was over,' Mr. Lee told me.\n\n'We lived on the first floor of a three-storey building in Pottinger Street. There was a printing workshop on the ground floor.'\n\nAccording to Mr. Lee, his home was not far from the old Victoria Theatre, which stood in Pottinger Street. This was sometimes attended by Sir Francis May, the then Governor of Hong Kong (1912 to 1919). There were more street traders in those days, shouting out and advertising their wares.\n\nTo give a further idea of what Hong Kong was like in 1920, during World War One, the number of sedan chairs peaked at 1,215; whereas the number of rickshaws did not peak until 1924, with 3,411. In 1920, private cars numbered 351, up from 24 in 1914.\n\nI have always complimented Mr. Lee on his English. He, in turn, gives credit to his Chinese primary school teacher in Hong Kong. 'He was strict. But I learned my English grammar from him. Americans do not teach grammar,' he insists.\n\n‘I used to delight in taking a sentence to pieces and analysing it. We also studied the 'Four (Chinese) Books.'\n\nBecause his father, as a businessman in the fields of jewellery and cosmetics, spent 10 years in Australia as a young man, there was only one other child, Mr. Lee's elder sister. Mr. Lee's father was one of the two founders of the Sincere Department Store in Hong Kong. Father died at the age of 36, and filial Mr. Lee gives great credit to his mother, ‘a remarkably capable woman. She brought us up. I owe her a lot,' he told me.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213164, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1993", "page_number": 232, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "214\n\nMr. Lee settled down in Hong Kong working as the manager of the Sincere Company (Perfumery) Manufacturers Ltd. He eventually fathered five sons and two daughters by his first marriage, and one son by his second marriage. He is proud that there have been four generations of Christians in his family with one of his sons becoming a minister.\n\nHe remained in Hong Kong during the Second World War, when times were hard. The Japanese inspected his factory and allowed it to continue to operate.\n\n'During the war there were no imports of cosmetics. Our Hong Kong manufactured products sold well. We did good business.'”\n\n'Because Hong Kong was more exposed to the outside world,' Mr. Lee maintains, 'Japanese atrocities in the Colony were never as bad as they were in China.'\n\nREFERENCES:-\n\nGillingham, Paul, At the Peak, Hong Kong Between the Wars, MacMillan (1983)\n\nLeeds, P.F., The Development of Public Transport in Hong Kong - An Historical Review, a paper presented to the Hong Kong Section of the Chartered Institute of Transport (November 1974)", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213266, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1994", "page_number": 88, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "68\n\nback door. In this way prosperous winds are not allowed to blow straight out of the other side. Considerable care was taken, too, in selecting the positions and angles of the two long escalators leading up to the first floor of the Bank. They should not directly 'confront' the entrance.\n\nUnlike most enterprises in urban Hong Kong 'The Bank' still has an open space in front of it and a sea view. The harbour is the bathing place of the dragon. With water signifying money this is important. Water is the most powerful of all the Elements. It is non-resistant. It can wear away rocks. A deluge can sweep all before it.\n\nIn many cases planners go to some lengths, among other measures, to ensure that interior water features assist good joss to circulate throughout a building. The height of the ejection of water of a fountain is often considered important.\n\nThe now liquidated Hong Kong Branch of the Bank of Credit and Commerce was sadly not so wise. '... the BCC displayed a large water feature which cascaded away from the entrance... this means (in fung shui terms) wealth pours out of the bank. I am surprised anyone should put their money into this bank in the first place,' a fung shui master contended.\n\nThere are countless cases where western managements have paid consideration to fung shui in Hong Kong (Saw, 1990:8) In Exchange Square, for example, a special skylight was installed and the 'water curtains' on either side of the two escalators are spectacular. In the Hyatt Regency Hotel doors and furniture were repositioned.\n\nVirgin Atlantic Airways timed their first flight to the Far East to start on a propitious day. Marks and Spencer buried lucky gold coins in strategic positions under floors in its stores, and Arthur Andersen, the accounting firm, also pays regard to the 'caring philosophy'. Asians, of course, like to see Westerners respecting their culture. In turn, it is good for business (Sunday Times, 1995:16).\n\nThe author has no hard data, but his personal recollections are that clearly far more interest is shown in fung shui by western establishments today than 40 or so years ago. Certainly there is far more interest in it now than there was between the two World Wars. Going back still further,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214064, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1997", "page_number": 132, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "99\n\n1941 there were thirteen operational batteries (complete with underground ammunition magazines, living quarters and access roads) on the Island, the earliest emplacements for these being built around 1895, an underground battle headquarters off Queen's Road near the naval dockyard (completed in 1940) and scores of reinforced-concrete structures comprising pill-boxes, observation posts, searchlight positions, anti-aircraft sites, bunkers, shelters, ammunition and stores dumps, tunnels and water tanks. On Stonecutters' Island the Royal Navy built between the World Wars a huge ammunition depot which included eleven large underground magazines; earlier the first land-based explosives' depot was completed here in 1876 from where it was transferred to Green Island in 1906. Of the original six battery emplacements designed and constructed on Stonecutters' Island during the period 1880-1905, only one remained commissioned at the outbreak of hostilities.\n\nThe two battery positions on Devil's Peak in Kowloon overlooking Lai Yue Mun gap were constructed soon after the New Territories' lease was signed in 1898 and a redoubt on top of the hill was completed by the Royal Engineers in 1914. The guns however were removed in 1936 and transferred to the Island. Subsequently the 18km-long Gin Drinkers' defence line was constructed during the mid-1930s across the hills to the north of the Kowloon peninsula and comprised a series of pill-boxes, trenches, bunkers and tunnels, the key feature being the underground Shing Mun Redoubt covering some five hectares on the northern flank of Smugglers' Ridge.\n\nThe decision to construct air raid shelters so that the whole urban population could be protected was not taken until 1940. In the space of about a year some 22 kilometres of 2.5m-size tunnels (of which about 80% still exist) were constructed on the Island and in Kowloon, including one adjacent to the Secretariat in Lower Albert Road which extended to Government House causing structural damage. In view of the urgent need for these tunnels, the project was arranged on a cost-plus basis and gave rise to rampant corruption, one architect involved even committing suicide to avoid giving evidence. The sub-standard pre-cast concrete breeze blocks made by the Director of Air Raid Precaution's girlfriend's firm are still (or at least until recently) known in the trade as Mimi blocks. Unfortunately the report on the Commission of Enquiry was never made public; it was taken into the Stanley internment", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214131, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1997", "page_number": 199, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "170\n\nlocated. The Seventh Day Adventist Church, which stands at numbers 6-8 on the tree-lined Sun Yat-sen Road (formerly part of Tung Sui Road), was on the site of a building used during the war years as an officers mess (see Plate III). The clinic, which now stands at No. 28 Shui Dong Kai (Water East Street), is on the site where a 'hospital' and the BAAG headquarters were situated during World War Two. Then, Huizhou stood in a kind of ‘no-man's-land'. It was not part of 'Free China' nor was it really in Japanese occupied territory. But the Japanese did make regular incursions into the city which was an undercover centre for Chinese guerillas and the British Army Aid Group.\n\nMembers of the Allied Forces would occasionally escape from prisoner-of-war camps in Hong Kong and make their way, with the help of Chinese guerillas, to Sai Kung. From there they would sail over to the coast of China and proceed on up to Huizhou to link up with the 'East River Column' of guerillas. After rest and medical attention escapees would make their way to the hinterland and Free China proper. Huizhou was well positioned as an escape route which was provided by a road network, of sorts, and the East River which flows along to the Bocca Tigris in the Pearl River Delta.\n\n5\n\nMen who managed to escape included Colonel Anthony Hewitt (at the time Captain) of the ‘Die-Hards', the Middlesex Regiment, who gave a talk in November 1996, to the RASHKB entitled 'The Defence of Leighton Hill during the 1941 Battle for Hong Kong'. Colonel L.T. Ride also escaped to set up and head the British Army Aid Group. Sir Lindsay, who was Vice Chancellor of the University of Hong Kong from 1949 to 1964, was also a founder member of the RASHKB, in 1960, when it was reestablished. He was President of our Branch from 1969 to 1972.\n\nAlthough members of our RAS Group saw a considerable amount of new building as we drove from Shenzhen to Huizhou on that November day in 1997, one was struck by the number of walled villages and watch towers. This part of China was, obviously, a pretty lawless region at one time, and, to some extent, it still is. One occasionally sees cars plying the roads without number plates and right-hand drive vehicles which have probably been smuggled in, one assumes from Hong Kong.\n\nT", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214150, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1998", "page_number": 8, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "CONTENTS\n\nPRESIDENT'S REPORT ........................................................................................................................ xii\n\nFRIENDS OF THE RAS (UK) REPORT.................... xxvi\n\nAUDITOR'S REPORT ........................................................................................................................ xxviii\n\nHON. LIBRARIAN'S REPORT ............................................................................................................. xxxv\n\nARTICLES\n\nDan Waters - Laughter Across the Great Wall: A Comparison of Chinese and Western Humour ........ 1\n\nKeith Stevens - Images of Sinicised Vedic Deities on Chinese Altars ................................................ 51\n\nRichard J. Garrett - Weapons of the China Wars ............................................................................... 107\n\nKeith Stevens - Naturalist, Author, Artist, Explorer and Editor, and Almost Forgotten President: Arthur de Carle Sowerby, 1885 - 1954, President of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1935 - 1940 ............ 121\n\nKeith Stevens and Jennifer Welch - Xu, the Taoist Perfected Lord Xu Zhenjun, the Protective Deity of Jiangsi Province........... 137\n\nGillian Bickley - Plum Puddings and Sharp Boys, \"One Touch of Nature Makes the Whole World Kin\": An Analysis of the China Coverage in the Illustrated London News, 5 January to 23 September, 1861 ........ 147\n\nKeith Stevens - The Deification of Heroes Following the Struggle by the Vassal State of Chou to Overthrow the Shang Dynasty...... 173\n\nKeith Stevens - Temples Arise from the Ashes of Revolution ........................................................... 187\n\nvii", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214192, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1998", "page_number": 50, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "13\n\nvariety of humour and just talking mo lei tau (nonsense, f). It all adds up to people coming out of a show and feeling good about themselves.\n\nChinese humour\n\nWhereas Westerners have been described as being seriously humorous, Chinese have been said to be 'humorously serious' (Kao, 1946; XVIII). Chinese humour is, by and large, down to earth, with a surfeit of action, with the hero's mother breaking a leg or the bully being beaten up. Much of it may, nevertheless, be, so called, mo lei tau, and include a certain amount of Western style slapstick.\n\nIt was not until the beginning of the 20th century (unlike the West where they became popular two or three centuries earlier) that cartoons became popular in China (Xu, 1989; preface). The reason was largely because China was a semi-feudal society and people did not have freedom to create works of humour and sarcasm. Today, under socialism, works considered 'in poor taste' are often still not accepted for publication. Often cartoons tend to be used as resistance to oppression and, like a dagger or javelin, aimed to do 'battle.' Having said all that, however, many Westerners (as well as many Hong Kong Chinese) believe humour in China is not subtle enough and it does not demand rapid thought. In the main it is straightforward, then there is a pause followed by the punchline.\n\n'Laugh talk' (slapstick), as it is sometimes dubbed, generally goes down well with Chinese, and, between the two World Wars, it is understood that on the first night of a show put on by the family of Sir Run Run Shaw, in Shanghai, an actor, purely by accident, fell through the floorboards. Because this was considered hilarious by the audience, the Shaw showbiz family made it a permanent part of the act.\n\nThe author recalls when he visited Hainan Island, in China in 1987, in an off-the-beaten-track village, a Chinese infant was placed on his shoulder. The child wore standard Chinese shorts, with a longish vertical split in the seat. This conveniently opened automatically when it squatted to do its business. As it sat on the author's shoulder its bare bottom rubbed against his face. What a joke! All the Chinese, espe-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214479, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1998", "page_number": 337, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "306\n\npaper cutting recalling the story of his life. Many of the papers and photographs, which have been placed by the Royal Asiatic Society with the Government Public Records Office on permanent loan, could be of interest to RAS members who are undertaking research in relevant fields.\n\nAmong the maps of the Pacific region are some of Japan and Shanghai, one dated 1919. There is also an unusual map (undated) of Shanghai (3 feet x 2 feet 3 inches) which has a 'border' consisting of a large number of small pictures. On the map is printed, 'In this map we have tried to depict for you the history, customs and points of interest in this cosmopolitan city of Shanghai.'\n\nMany of Mr Graham's photographs concern the Shanghai Gas Company. They include group pictures of the staff, both Chinese and Westerners, at farewell parties, group gatherings and the like. In all these pictures no women are present. Most images were taken in the early 1930s, when Arnold Graham, as a young man, was Assistant Secretary. There is one photograph of a smaller group, again of both Westerners and Chinese, where some Chinese men are wearing cheung saams. This is interesting because it was taken in October 1950, one year after the People's Republic Government came to power. There is just one photograph of a group which includes both men and women. This was taken in London in 1957. All are Europeans. It was probably a reunion.\n\nThere is also an album containing a number of snaps of life in Shanghai and China, in the 1930s, and during the Sino-Japanese war. There are also a number of family photographs depicting the lifestyle of Europeans in the Far East between the two World Wars.\n\nWhat did Arnold Graham do in his spare time? He was a keen cricketer and a Shanghai Interporter. There are a number of photographs, of varying sizes, of cricket teams: such as Hong Kong versus Malaya, at Singapore in 1926. There is a picture of the teams, 'Hankow versus Shanghai circa 1930.' There are some pictures taken with people sitting in front of pavilions. Most of the photographs consist entirely of Europeans. In a few pictures, however, there are one or two Chinese who could have been groundsmen. The papers in the box include a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214486, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1998", "page_number": 344, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "The Shanghai Paper Hunt Club - shades of the Fanling Club, in Hong Kong's New Territories-between the two World Wars.\n\n313", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214487, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1998", "page_number": 345, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "314\n\nLife for an expatriate in Shanghai, between the two World Wars, was similar to the lifestyle in Hong Kong.\n\nPage 345\nPage 346", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214749, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 164, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "128\n\nclaim that the defenders faced shortages in ammunition, notably for mortars. However, the movement of the defenders' guns within the defence perimeter throughout the Battle was rather hectic, aided by at least 20 armoured cars and more than 3,000 motor cars and 600 trucks. This indicated that the artillery arm of the garrison was playing a key role in prolonging the duration of the defence. Therefore, the effective firepower of the defenders did not appear to be as weak as frequently represented in publications up to now on the Battle of Hong Kong. The story of the defence of Hong Kong apparently could well have been distorted in favour of the winner.\n\nConclusion: a Plea for Further Research\n\nThe above points are just informed speculation and the Battle of Hong Kong is certainly an under-researched military episode in the Second World War. This being the case, it should be just a matter of interest not only to those directly involved.\n\n...\n\nIn broad historical terms, the significance of the Battle of Hong Kong should not be limited to a matter of war relics or past history. It has implications for the post-war political development of Hong Kong, a living issue that affects the present both physically and socially. We have mentioned the credibility of the defence of Hong Kong as a matter of responsible government and a matter of fact but not as an apology for British colonialism. There are still unknown numbers of unexploded bombs, both Japanese and Allied, yet to be unearthed in highly congested urban sites. There are also quite a number of old people in Hong Kong (and elsewhere in Asia) who still hold Japanese military currency, forced upon them when their convertible currencies were expropriated during the occupation, in the vain hope of obtaining compensation by the Japanese government (Keniti; Kobayasi Hideo and Isida Jimtarou, 1995).\n\nThe military aspects of the fighting itself should be interesting case study materials for the military scientist. Many other questions remain unanswered. The size and role and size of the \"fifth columnists\", the tactics of the Japanese and the useful value of occupied Hong Kong to the Japanese are just a few examples. Though these questions for a minor theatre of war may not catch the attention of those who are only interested in the broad-brush views of Liddell Hart (1970), they should", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214844, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 259, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "226\n\nconcerning the Opium Question and have come to the conclusion that we have no right to date the present eruption to that cause, as we have been insulted, our Trade interfered with, and British subjects have been maltreated long before Opium was mentioned and we have only been too tardy in seeking redress.” Letter of August 21st 1840 from Chusan, from “An Artillery Officer in China, 1840-1842”, Blackwood's, 1964, p. 80.\n\n\"The Cree Journals, The Voyages of Edward H. Cree, Surgeon R.N., as Related in his Private Journals, 1837-1856 Edited and with an Introduction by Michael Levien. (Exeter, Webb & Bower, 1981), p. 117.\n\n12\n\nAs, e.g. in Bingham, op.cit., Vol.I, p. 187: \"Captain Elliot assured the Chinese, by proclamations in their language, that no harm was intended to the peaceable inhabitants by the present expedition; that it was caused by Lin's bad treatment of the English; and that the force would only act against the mandarins, officers, and soldiers of the government.\"\n\n13 Bingham, Vol.II, p.171, and Jack Beeching, The Chinese Opium Wars (Hutchinson of London, 1975), p.129.\n\n14 Beeching, p.149. They had done the same in Lower Burma in 1824-26 (George Bruce, The Burma Wars 1824-1886 (London, Hart-Davis, MacGibbon, 1973) pp.33-35.\n\n15 See Michael Howard, George J. Andreopoulos and Mark R. Sheridan (Eds), The Laws of War, Constraints on Warfare in the Western World (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1994), chapter 6, \"The Age of Napoleon”, in which Gunther Rothenberg wrote (p.97) that \"Professional soldiers were well aware of the laws and customs of war between civilized states, and by and large observed them,” and that despite atrocities and violations, their \"basic existence and validity” were never challenged.\n\n16 The most notable example being the firing of a salute of minute guns by the flagship, HMS Blenheim, when Admiral Kuan's body was recovered by his family after the battle of the Bogue in January 1841: see Bingham, Vol.II, p. 151, and Beeching, p. 128.\n\n18\n\nBeeching, pp. 147, 151. Wyndham Baker in Blackwood's p.79. By way of comment he added, “The", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214845, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 260, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "227\n\nChinese, except as regards the use of Opium, are exceedingly temperate in their habits and we cannot account for the immense distilleries which have been discovered here.\"\n\n19 Captain Sir Edward Belcher, Narrative of a Voyage Round the World, performed in Her Majesty's Ship Sulphur, During the Years 1836-1842. Including details of the Naval Operations in China, From Dec. 1840, to Nov. 1841 (London 1843, Dawsons of Pall Mall reprint, 1970, Vol.II, p.152.\n\nWyndham Baker, p.156. Commenting, he had added, \"The British common soldier in fact is a strange compound, for they are very kind to their prisoners when once the excitement ceases.\"\n\n21 Beeching, p.136.\n\n22\n\n24 Beeching, p.152. Another British placard recorded by Chu warned that there was to be no more commandeering of goods without payment: ibid. However, despite good intentions, according to another Chinese diary, this time from Shanghai in 1842, rape and looting did occur there, and impressment of civilians for forced labour for such heavy work as shifting gun emplacements and gunpowder [ibid., p.149]. Wyndham Baker, when landing his guns before Chin Kiang Foo, refers to \"about 100 helpless natives to assist in carrying the shot boxes.\" Baker, in Blackwood's 1964, pp.161-2.\n\nBeeching, p.139.\n\nThe British Foreign Secretary, Lord Aberdeen, had agreed, minuting: “The worst proposal I have seen from Mr. Pottinger....It ought not to pass unnoticed\": Beeching, pp.139-140. But Pottinger deserves credit for preserving the famed Porcelain Pagoda at Nanking from British soldiers and sailors who, armed with chisels and hatchets, were intent on obtaining souvenirs by stripping tiles from the tower. \"Sir Henry Pottinger was very indignant at this gratuitous vandalism; a guard was stationed to keep off intruders, and no one was thenceforth allowed to visit the tower without a permit from the Admiral or Commander-in-Chief.\" Parkes wrote, \"Such an act as this is shameful and a disgrace to the British name.\" From Stanley Lane-Poole, Sir Harry Parkes in China (London, Methuen & Co., 1901), p.32. Alas, the Porcelain Pagoda was destroyed by the Taipings not long after, in 1856.\n\n25 Edgar Holt, The Opium Wars in China (London, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1964), p.139.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214850, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 265, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "232\n\nRoutledge, New Edition, 1859)\n\nGeorge Henry Mason, The Costume of the Chinese (London, William Miller, 1804)\n\nLieutenant John Ouchterlony, The Chinese War: An Account of All the Operations of the British Forces from the Commencement to the Treaty of Nanking (London, Saunders and Otley, 1844)\n\n\"An Artillery Officer in China, 1840-1842,\" Blackwood's, 1964.\n\nThe Cree Journals, The Voyages of Edward H. Cree, Surgeon R. N., as Related in his Private Journals, 1837-1856 Edited and with an Introduction by Michael Levien. (Exeter, Webb & Bower, 1981)\n\nJack Beeching, The Chinese Opium Wars (Hutchinson of London, 1975)\n\nCaptain Sir Edward Belcher, Narrative of a Voyage Round the World, performed in Her Majesty's Ship Sulphur, During the Years 1836-1842. Including details of the Naval Operations in China, From Dec. 1840, to Nov. 1841 (London 1843, Dawsons of Pall Mall reprint, 1970)\n\nStanley Lane-Poole, Sir Harry Parkes in China (London, Methuen & Co., 1901)\n\nEdgar Holt, The Opium Wars in China (London, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1964)\n\nSir Henry Keppel, A Sailor's Life under Four Sovereigns (London, 3 vols., 1899)\n\n1881)\n\nLaurence Shadwell, Life and Campaigns of Lord Clyde (London, 1881)\n\n\"Oh for the Joys of England! Lt Rolando Bridgman's Letters From China and Hong Kong, 1842-1843\", in Journal of the Hong Kong Branch, Royal Asiatic Society Vol.14 (1974)\n\nSir John Francis Davis, Chinese Miscellanies: A Collection of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214856, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 271, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "239\n\nTwo important things happened in October 1971: firstly, men were no longer allowed to take concubines and, secondly, every person had to have at least one full day off work a week. Up until then people in small Chinese firms frequently laboured seven days a week with a few days off at Lunar New Year and odd days off at major Chinese festivals - like Dragon Boat and Mid Autumn Festival.\n\nPeople\n\nEnough about statistics: what about RAS members who made things happen?\n\nI will always remember Dr J R Jones CBE, MC, MA, LL.D, JP, who served as our President from the time our Branch was reconstituted until 1970. I first met J R in early 1955 at a Dante Alighieri (the Italian Society) meeting. Then I learned he had a penchant for things antiquarian as well as languages — although he spoke little Chinese. There are a few short pieces written by him in early RAS Journals.\n\nI remember him in a pinstripe, blue suit and, although fairly tall, he could be described as dapper, polished and a ladies' man. He was gentlemanly, personable and, as such, made a splendid RAS ‘front man.' Much of the work behind the scenes, such as setting up the reconstituted Branch in 1960, was in fact done by Dr Marjorie Topley and Jack Cranmer-Byng, Honorary Editor. Marjorie Topley became our President in 1972.\n\nDr Jones had led an interesting life including serving King, Country and Empire in two world wars, as well as helping to organise the Ukrainian Army soon after the end of World War One. He also went on archaeological expeditions to Italy and Africa. As a lawyer he practised at the High Court in London and later in Shanghai. In Hong Kong he was legal advisor to The Bank, as he always referred to the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank.\n\nIn fact he advised 'the Bank' to buy a number of paintings by George Chinnery (1774 to 1852). The latter is often said to have been the most accomplished western artist to have worked in the East in the 19th century. These paintings, which the Bank purchased, were a splendid investment. In addition, JR sat on a number of government", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214894, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 309, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "283\n\nTHE HKBRAS TRIP TO VIETNAM BETWEEN 30 SEPTEMBER AND 6 OCTOBER 2000\n\nCRYSTAL TANG\n\nTo take advantage of the two holidays, the Royal Asiatic Society's all overseas visit took place from September 30 to October 6, 2000 to Central Vietnam. Under the leadership of Dr. Patrick Hase, there were 20 of us in total; we started off our trip in the cosmopolitan south - Ho Chi Minh City. Saigon, the former capital of South Vietnam until 1975, when it collapsed along with the anti-communist resistance struggle, now bears the name of Ho Chi Minh City,\n\nWe stayed overnight at the Renaissance Riverside Hotel facing the beautiful Saigon River. Everyone in the group had a superb view from their rooms. Ho Chi Minh City is definitely a city on the move with its throngs of scooters, cycles, bicycles and cars running endlessly on the streets even at midnight. What an experience to cross the street there - you take your life into your own hands, it's entirely up to the pedestrian to avoid the traffic, not the other way round. According to the vice chairman of the Road Transport Administration of Vietnam, Mr. Nguyen Manh Hung, \"traffic accidents are a bigger threat in Vietnam than the AIDS virus\". I'm glad I came back to Hong Kong alive.\n\nAfter dinner, I strolled along the streets near our Hotel. In a sense the French presence remains, lingering not only in the minds of the older generation but physically in the legacy of the colonial architecture and the long tree-lined avenues, streets and highways they left behind.\n\nThe next day we arrived in Hue. Hue is one of the few ancient capital cities of the world that maintains today a cultural heritage of national and international importance. On making Hue the capital of Vietnam early in the 19th century, the Nguyen dynasty (1802-1945) constructed here a complete urban complex in which the Perfume River played a vital role. Fortifications and palaces, where the Court held office and the Royal family lived, are built on the north bank of the river. Here exist three walled enclosures and hundreds of palaces and buildings. UNESCO declared these monuments in Hue World Cultural Heritage sites in 1993.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214950, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2000", "page_number": 46, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "ARTICLES\n\nTEA AND OPIUM\n\nSOLOMON BARD\n\n“Thank God for tea! What would the world do without tea?\n\nHow did it exist? I am glad I was not born before tea.”\n\nPreamble\n\nSidney Smith, clergyman and author (18th cent.)\n\n2\n\nThe tragic events and the underlying causes of the Anglo-Chinese Conflict of 1839-1860, known as the Opium Wars, have been analysed in many scholarly publications and debates from various, sometimes opposing viewpoints. To the Chinese, the opium question seemed its principal cause. For the British, opium was only an immediate pretext; the issues were much deeper, such as opening the gates more fully to all manner of foreign trade and forcing China to engage in commercial and diplomatic intercourse according to Western rules. The West sought after Chinese goods; in particular, the demand for tea and silk was immense, and China was for the present the sole source of tea. In return, the Chinese demand for British goods was insignificant. The resulting imbalance in trade was an unsound practice then as it would be today. The strength of this argument can be judged by the fact that Britain was prepared to go to war with China to force bilateral trade relations. India offered Britain a solution in the way of opium and, to a lesser extent, raw cotton, both accepted by the Chinese. Even when consideration is given to different knowledge existing at the time regarding the harmful effects of opium, it is clear that the opium trade, backed as it was by force, was evil and unjustified. By the end of the 18th century, the consumption of tea in Britain had become phenomenal. It has been pointed out on occasions that the value of tea exported from and of opium imported into China appeared to be linked. The critical role played by opium in the Anglo-Chinese conflict has never been in doubt. The role of tea, however, has been less obvious. It is intended in\n\n1", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214955, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2000", "page_number": 51, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "6\n\nmet in armed conflict - futile and unnecessary. Ironically, both were strongly devoted to tea though their actual taste in tea may have been different.\n\nThe Chinese did not call their country China. To them it was the Middle Kingdom, the kingdom between heaven and earth, the Celestial Kingdom. The Emperor was the Son of Heaven who possessed divine powers. Their civilization was 5,000 years old, and for nearly half that period they lived in solid houses, dressed in silk, and produced works of art which are still admired today. Almost completely isolated from the western world since the Song Dynasty, China was oblivious to the achievements of the West in many fields. Proud and self-contained, China shunned outside contacts. In their self-proclaimed superiority, the Chinese in the 18th century still believed that only barbarians lived beyond their boundaries and that their countries were automatically vassal states of the Celestial Kingdom. Chinese contempt for foreigners persisted into the later periods, no doubt fuelled by the shameful behaviour of the foreign powers towards China, humbled and humiliated by the defeats in the Opium Wars. 'Barbarian devils' was a description often uttered even by relatively enlightened Chinese. Is it then any wonder that even in our time “Kwai Lo” (though no longer “Fan Kwai”) is still often heard, though perhaps more in jest, and used even by the foreigners themselves?\n\nBritain, on the other hand, in the early 19th century was opening one of the most glorious pages of its history. Napoleon was defeated and France was no longer a threat. The Royal Navy reigned supreme over the waves and Britain had become truly a great imperial power dominating huge areas of territory and much of the trade from the New World to the Far East. In 1837 the young Queen Victoria ascended the throne and a long period of British colonial rule had asserted itself. The British nation had every reason to feel proud and superior. But with superiority came also arrogance and a deep distrust of foreigners.\n\nWe live in a time when the world has discarded Imperialism and Colonialism, the right of strong nations to rule over weak ones, when some disputes at least are settled in a forum of nations, when the right of all peoples to self-determination is recognized. The latter is a recent principle: born of the Versailles Treaty, after the 1st World War, it has forged ahead without stopping. But in the 19th century, imperialism", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214965, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2000", "page_number": 61, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "PROUDFOOT, W.J.: Notes from Biographical Memoir of James Dinwiddie, LL.D, embracing his account of travels in China as a member of Macartney's Embassy, Edward Howell, Liverpool, 1886.\n\nWALEY, A.: The Opium War Through Chinese Eyes, Allen and Unwin, London, 1958.\n\nWONG, J.Y.: Deadly Dreams: Opium and the Arrow War (1856-1860) in China, Cambridge University Press, 1998.\n\nWOODWARD, N.H.: Teas of the World, Collier Macmillan, London, 1980.\n\nThis paper was presented at the \"International Conference on Lin Zexu, the Opium War and Hong Kong,” held at the Hong Kong Museum of History in December 1998.\n\nAmong his many other accomplishments, Dr. S. M. Bard, OBE, ED, is also a historian.\n\nHis published works include the following: In Search of the Past: A Guide to the Antiquities of Hong Kong (Urban Council Hong Kong 1988); Traders of Hong Kong: Some Foreign Merchant Houses, 1841-1899 (Urban Council Hong Kong 1993); and Garrison Memorials in Hong Kong: Some Graves and Monuments at Happy Valley (Antiquities and Monuments Office, Hong Kong: Occasional Paper No. 4, 1997).\n\nSome scholars prefer to divide the Wars into the Opium War, 1839-1842, and the Arrow War, 1856-1860.\n\n* A Dutchman, Dr Cornelius Decker, advocated 40-50 cups a day.\n\nPortuguese Princess Catherine is credited with introducing tea to Britain when she married King Charles II.\n\nA story is told of German Radio, during the 2nd World War, which announced that due to shortage of tea in Britain, the British were ready to sue for peace, not having access to their 5-o'clock tea. It only served to amuse the British, for the Germans got the time wrong!", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214970, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2000", "page_number": 66, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "22\n\nHan Suyin's patrimonial heritage is very specific, as her father originated from the Hakkas, or \"Guest People,\" a sub-group of ethnical Han Chinese, which initially meant displaced, dispossessed, and hungry peasants, the refugees from misery, migrating in millions from the regions struck by floods, droughts, foreign invasions, civil wars, and rural upheavals, and simply \"seeking a roof.\" The Hakkas themselves claim that they moved five times within recorded history, their first migration dating at about A.D. 311, and the fifth one at the end of the Taiping rising (i.e., in the sixties of the nineteenth century). Their culture was to a very large extent affected by the turbulence of political and social events, by their own relative insecurity in the territories of new settlement, and by the resulting enormous eagerness and ability to survive. For these particular reasons, a somewhat remote analogy can perhaps be drawn between the mobile, industrious, and hard-working Hakkas, dispersed among the settled Han population, and the Jewish enclaves dispersed in medieval Europe and in the contemporary world as well.\n\nIn the thirteenth century - the time of Gengis Khan's invasion and of the resulting third migration - Han Suyin's distant ancestors, named Chou, settled in Meihsien in the province of Kuangtung, a purely Hakka district. The wave of the Manchu-dynasty-inspired fourth migration (1680-1720) took some of them further to Szechuan, the region of Four Streams, a remote Chinese hinterland guarded from the outer world by the cliffs of Tibet, the Snow Mountains, and the Cold Mountains, and the dangerous Yangtse gorges. The recorded family history starts from the first ancestor, who arrived in Szechuan as an itinerant pedlar, most probably carrying across his shoulder a pole, with the baskets swinging at both ends to transport miserable personal property and sale goods.\n\nBy the nineteenth century, Han Suyin's family had managed to climb up the economic and social ladder, to attain the top echelon, i.e., the scholar-official-administrator class. They had become local landed gentry, the cornerstone of the Chinese feudal social setup, and this anachronistic setup might have continued ad infinitum, had it not, under pressure from the colonial superpowers, ultimately collapsed.\n\nHan Suyin's father, Chou Yentung, was born in 1886 in China already invaded by the French and the British, the two colonial", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215158, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2000", "page_number": 254, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "214\n\nA Brief History of Technical Education in Hong Kong\n\nSchool (VTS), that a new curriculum was phased in. It changed from being a trade school and became a secondary technical school.\n\nMeanwhile the Far East Flying Training School -- the original name -- commenced training pilots and engineers for the civil aviation industry in 1934. The Far East Flying and Technical School Limited, as it was later renamed, sited at Kai Tak, was a private institution. It shut its doors in 1983 because of the rapid expansion of government-sponsored technical education.\n\nMeanwhile, retracing our steps, further progress in the field of technical education was made pre-World War Two when, in 1935, the Salesian Society founded the Aberdeen Trade School. This provided a sound general education, together with training considered to be comparable to an apprenticeship.\n\nLike the JTS, this School too was converted into a secondary technical school in the late 1950s. I recall visiting the Aberdeen Trade School on its open day, in January 1955, when I was struck by the high standard of craftsmanship of the students' work on display.\n\nThe first Government post-secondary technical institution was the old Trade School which opened in Wood Road, Wan Chai (using the old spelling), in 1937. It stood on the corner where the Vocational Training Council's multi-storey office block stands today. At the time of opening, under Principal George White, it ran courses in building, mechanical engineering (with a bias towards automobile engineering) and marine wireless operating. The Trade School also took over the evening classes previously run by Taikoo Dockyard at Quarry Bay.\n\nThe new, then two-storey (an additional floor was added in 1953) Trade School was well constructed on the lines of other colonial-style buildings erected between the two World Wars. It had high ceilings with paddle-fans because there was virtually no air-conditioning in Hong Kong at that time (an exception was the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank). The Trade School was one of the few examples of good face brickwork. In the 1950s navigation, commerce and textile", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215296, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 73, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "21\n\nKenya 33 per cent, Nigeria 58 per cent, Ceylon 52 per cent, Jamaica 60 per cent.\n\n7. For example Nyasaland in 1929 raised the duty on imported soap from 5 shillings to 7 shillings to protect a newly established factory. In 1931 the duty was increased to 8 shillings a cwt. The Colonial Office first heard of these increases in 1932 when Unilever complained. Memo IDC(37)No.7, T160/763/F14811/2.\n\n8. CO137/780. Georgina Waylen, 'Colonial Policy towards industrialisation between the wars: the case of Jamaica', Manchester Papers in Politics (University of Manchester, Nov. 1987, mimeo).\n\n9. In 1931 a local company proposed to establish a cement factory in Kenya which required a protective tariff and a guarantee that a very high anti-dumping duty would be imposed on Japanese cement which dominated the market. The Colonial Office refused the request for protection on the advice of the Board of Trade because the local factory if successful would take over government orders, depriving British cement manufacturers of the last remnant of the market. CO533/417/18. In 1933 the Colonial Office rejected a scheme to erect a cotton spinning and weaving factory in East Africa which required a capital subscription of £500,000 from the governments of Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika. IDC(37)No.8, T160/763/F14811/2. A proposal for a soap factory in the Windward Islands was disallowed because it involved the colony being given a preference over the UK in other colonies from which the copra was to be exported. IDC(37)No.7, T160/763/F14811/2.\n\n10. Hong Kong Blue Book 1846 (PRO, CO133/3), 226, stated ‘A large number of Chinese are employed in their respective shops and houses in the exercise of industrial trades and manufactures and there are scarcely any ordinary wants of the inhabitants which do not meet with a ready supply within the town.'\n\n11. These dates are taken from the Return of Manufactures, Mines and Factories in the Blue Books compiled every year for submission to the Colonial Office. Not all the manufacturing enterprises were successful: the cotton spinning factory closed in 1914 and removed its machinery to Shanghai. But new manufacturing ventures soon took their place. Sir William Robinson (governor 1891-98) in his first address to the legislative council spoke of the advantages that would accrue from a further encouragement of local industries. 'The community may rely upon my aid and assistance in fostering in every legitimate way the development of such enterprises.' Hong Kong Legislative Council Debates, 25 Jan. 1892, 97. This was done by selling public land by private treaty at a discount for industrial development, H.K. LegCo. Deb., 4 Dec. 1893, 1–2.\n\n12. CO129/379, 377-384 and 392-755.\n\n13. Hong Kong Blue Book 1930. Blue Book 1932. The largest factory was that of the Green Island Cement Company which could employ 1,470 men when working at full capacity.\n\n14. Statistics on imports and exports were first collected in 1918. Publication was discontinued in 1925 and resumed in 1931, but no distinction was made between re-exports and domestic exports until 1959. Estimates of gross domestic product were not made by government statisticians until 1961. Domestic exports have been calculated from Hong Kong Trade Returns 1932, compiled by the Imports and Exports Department (Hong Kong, 1933), CO133/103, by identifying all categories where exports exceeded imports, on the assumption that the surplus must represent Hong Kong domestic production. This calculation certainly understates local production since it does not take account of manufactures consumed locally. Also the trade figures do not include the very large volume of goods smuggled into China to avoid payment of customs duty.\n\n15. Memorandum in Clementi to Cunliffe-Lister, 20 Sept. 1933, CO323/1232.\n\n16. Report of the Commission appointed by the Governor to Enquire into the Causes and Effects of the Present Trade Depression in Hong Kong, February 1935 (Hong Kong, 1935), 88-89, CO129/554/5.\n\n17. Trade Depression Report, 75.\n\n18. W.K. Hancock, Survey of British Commonwealth Affairs Vol II, Problems of Economic Policy 1918-1939, Part 1 (Oxford, 1940), 87.\n\n19. CO129/344. CO129/370. CO129/392.\n\n20. F. V. Meyer, British Colonies in World Trade (Oxford, 1948), 9–11, 18–19.\n\n21. Hancock, 125. Meyer, 10-11.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215314, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 91, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "39\n\nif they were already engaged to be married, to exchange gifts with their future affinal relatives. Flower Dawn was a day which marked young girls' attainment of womanhood. Ears were pierced for wearing jewellery and from this day, marking the same shift, adolescent women let their hair grow long to announce their entry into the world of female concerns.\n\nEarly spring in the plains and hills of Hubei and Hunan was a period of beginnings and anticipations. The return of life force in Nature was a process drawing from symbolic codes and involving various rituals, as well as giving rise to a sequence of practical concerns in the mundane work in the rice fields. It is in these spring days that we find the celebration of two different festivals, each in its own way attuned to the season: the festivals can be seen as mutually complementary, the two handling different dimensions of the same world.\n\nThe ritual activities on this day reflected a social grammar of reciprocity in which gifts—meat and wine—were expected to generate a response from the She. The counter-gift would be an abundance of rice in the fields in late summer. A cognate ritual procedure would be staged some weeks later, but this time the rites would engage the mortal remains of the individual dead and the combinations of ancestral graves that formed the stock of memorabilia of particular lineages. These rituals would aim at a similarly beneficial effect on the coming crops, but would also be forward-looking, inviting the dead to return to the living in early summer.\n\nThe She Day was celebrated on a date calculated according to the sun's movement through the celestial zodiac, a procedure providing a relatively stable seasonal appearance. Its ritual liturgy related the occasion to the yin cosmic principle and stressed a downward direction, further associated with female forces, darkness and death. It is interesting that this festival of clear yin associations was calculated in accordance with the movement of the sun, the foremost exposition of the male, life-giving and celestial cosmic principle of yang. The festival appeared on the first wu day after the Li Chun day. Wu is, as already mentioned, the seventh of the 'Earthly Branches,' which, apart from being used to represent cyclical time, was associated with the midday hour and the southerly direction. It seems that a conventional calendar discourse, by the use of the wu branch, tied celestial progress", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215583, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 360, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "310\n\n31 Under such conditions temperatures could reach 40 degrees Celsius.\n\n32 Gap Rock is sometimes known as Daam Gon Shan, in Cantonese, meaning \"Carrying Pole Hill,\"\n\n33 Besides Waglan Island, lighthouse keepers on Green Island (who were also Government Marine Department Staff) carried out weather observations and passed information on to the Royal Observatory Office at Kai Tak Airport.\n\n34 When the author visited Waglan, in 1999, all the buildings, including keepers' and soldiers' quarters and the fog-horn building, were still there although they were generally dilapidated.\n\n35 Author interviewed Tam Cheong-wai, then Superintendent of Aids to Navigation, Government Marine Department, 22 February 1999. Tam has since retired.\n\n37\n\nIX\n\n10\n\nB.P. stands for \"Bailey Pegs\" the maker's name.\n\nFare was not spartan if compared to that given to British soldiers during World War Two when, the author recalls, on active service \"iron rations\" sometimes consisted of a tin of bully beef and a packet of \"hard tack\" (army biscuits) for each soldier.\n\nAuthor's interview with Lai Tak-wah, Government Marine Department, 12 February 1999.\n\n38 Sometimes known as the \"Rose of China.\"\n\n39 A number of rocks in Hong Kong are imagined as resembling animals, birds and other objects. There are Lion Rock, Amah Rock and Lovers' Rock (\"Marriage Fate Rock\"). The last is along Bowen Path and is supposed to symbolise an erect phallus.\n\n40 The author recalls in Britain, between the two World Wars, that there were still a number of pictures of Grace Darling hanging in homes showing her rowing a lifeboat in a storm.\n\n42 The notification of marriage appeared in the South China Morning Post in August 1935.\n\nPage 360\n\nPage 361", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215597, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 374, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "324\n\nJapanese were able to demand the formal opening of Chongqing to steamers, and a clause to this effect was embodied in the Treaty of Shiminoseki. By this treaty, under the favoured nation clause, the Chongqing and the Upper Yangzi became open to the world and Little immediately applied to the then British Minister, Sir Claude Macdonald [of the later Boxer Siege fame], who encouraged Little to proceed and promised energetic support. Little ordered a twin-screw steamer to be built in Shanghai, fifty-five feet long and ten feet beam. It steamed at nine knots, and though he would have preferred a larger and more powerful vessel he had to cut his coat according to his cloth. This was the Leechuen.\n\nHe left Yichang on 15th February 1898 for the 500-mile voyage through the Gorges, ascending some 500 feet during the journey to Chongqing. The story, told by Archibald Little in his Through the Yangtse Gorges,2 describes the most frightening moment when at dusk in the Scissors Gorge, making about six knots they bumped over a sharp rock that cut through the inch planking, broke two hardwood frames and sent water spouting up over the saloon floor. Fortunately they soon spotted a steep patch of sand on to which they ran the boat. Then, overnight, they stuffed cotton, white lead and tallow into the cracks; nailed blankets down with planks all over and by dawn had stopped the leak sufficiently to be able to get under way again. The rock had only newly fallen from the cliff above and had been unknown to the pilot. They reached Chongqing eleven days up from Yichang and the only photograph I have seen of the Leechuen during her epic journey is a very fuzzy snap of high cliffs with the Leechuen amidstream, a not so large speck, her billowing smoke being almost twice her size.3\n\nTwo British gunboats, H.M.S. Woodcock and H.M.S. Woodlark, made the same journey fifteen months later in May 1899, and then, in June, the first merchant steamer, Pioneer, followed them up to Chongqing.\n\nWe now turn to William Mesny. In 1878 and 1879 he travelled across south-west and central China calling on the most powerful and influential officials and gentry, advising them to adopt modern means for developing the riches of the country and bettering their conditions.* Mesny was a Jerseyman who spent most of his life, from first setting foot in China in 1861 until his death in Hankou in 1919 endeavouring to make his fortune. He was never backward in relating how he had the ears of many of the most influential Chinese of the day and although", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215696, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 473, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "426\n\nMade more by way of observation, there is the matter of the restrictions imposed, in their turn, upon the foreign traders at the Thirteen Factories in Canton (see p.97 and the Addendum). Mrs. Garrett has explained how they were increasingly ignored by them, in her chapter 9 (\"Disobedience and Destruction: The China Wars\"). Here, it seems appropriate to note that the laws of China, designed to support the security of the government and the happiness of the people through enforcing the moral ideas and usages which had characterized the nation over two millennia, were (like the 'Regulations' for the foreign merchants) precisely and minutely detailed, so as to be readily available to the authorities as and when required.\n\nNon-compliance with the laws was not confined to outsiders! One notable deviation was noted by Sir George Thomas Staunton (a resident at the Factories 1798-1816) in his part translation of Qing Statute Law, published in London in 1810; that is, how certain ‘religious' activities, prohibited in the penal code, were 'openly practised in every part of the empire,' leading him to surmise that these clauses were 'retained for the purpose of enabling the magistrates to control and keep within bounds these popular superstitions,' when required. (p.175n of the Taiwan reprint by Ch'eng-Wen Publishing Co., Taipei, 1966; with another such on theatrical representations at p.418n). I mention these points in passing, as being relevant for the times.\n\nReturning to Mrs. Garrett's book, the standard of production is high, and typos are few. But (e.g.) since he has been mentioned, Osmond Tiffany, Jr. appears variously in several places, including the index, as 'Oswald' or 'Osmand': Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)'s book, The Golden Chersonese has been misspelt: and the Cantonese romanization for the Eighteenth Ward is Shap Pat Po, not ‘Shap Pak Pu.' (pp.144-5).\n\nBut this is to cavil. All in all, this is a very competent and attractive recreation of a bygone world, linked to surviving buildings and other relics from the time, and heartily recommended to the reader - for all of which reasons, the kind of specially-drawn map I have suggested should form part of any further edition of this book.\n\nJAMES HAYES", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215769, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2002", "page_number": 68, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "1\n\nARTICLES\n\nTHE TRANSFER OF THE STRAITS SETTLEMENTS: A REVISIONIST APPROACH TO THE STUDY OF COLONIAL LAW AND ADMINISTRATION\n\nANDREW ABRAHAM\n\n[Hon. Ed. - The Straits Settlements was a former British crown colony on the Strait of Malacca, comprising four trade centres, Penang, Singapore, Malacca, and Labuan, established or taken over by the British East India Company. The British settlement at Penang was founded in 1786, at Singapore in 1819; Malacca, occupied by the British during the Napoleonic Wars, was transferred to the East India Company in 1824. The three territories were established as a crown colony in 1867. Labuan, which became part of Singapore Settlement in 1907, was constituted a fourth separate settlement in 1912.\n\nThe Straits colony, occupied by the Japanese during World War II, was broken up in 1946, when Singapore became a separate crown colony. Singapore attained full internal self-government in 1959, became a part of Malaysia in 1963, and became an independent republic in 1965. Labuan was incorporated in North Borneo (later Sabah) in 1946, which in turn became a part of Malaysia in 1963. Penang and Malacca were included in the Malayan Union in 1945, the Federation of Malaya in 1948, and Malaysia in 1963.]\n\nIntroduction\n\nThe Straits Settlements were transferred in 18671 to the Colonial Office's administration due to the dissatisfaction of the European merchants with the Indian government's rule. Their grievances were cited in a petition in 1857, the most contentious of which cover complaints of the East India Company's (EIC) attempts to introduce measures damaging to trade, problems with piracy and convicts, and failure of the Indian government to build up an influence in the Malay peninsula.\n\nHowever, a study of the history of the Straits Settlements shows evidence of a booming economy, many cases of intervention by the EIC in the affairs of the Malay states, and issues such as those concerning piracy, convicts and currency more or less resolved. Furthermore,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216109, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2002", "page_number": 408, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "342\n\nthey would have provided (had they been left) and for the urban lineage they would have represented. Those wonderful old buildings are no longer with us to provide anchors in times of need.\n\nThey were replaced within a few years by high-rise air-conditioned buildings. Many depend upon artificial lighting and ventilation and have windows which do not open. Today, so many live and work in an artificial atmosphere. This major change led long ago to people discarding shorts and open-necked shirts and wearing two-piece suits and more formal and more uncomfortable clothing. The new lifestyle meant the better off were stepping from their air-conditioned homes, carrying brief cases, into their air-conditioned cars and then being conveyed to their air-conditioned offices.\n\nAt the end of World War Two the Chinese Nationalist Government was waiting in the wings just over the border to take over Hong Kong. But the British beat them to it. If the Americans had had their way, and British rule had been terminated in Hong Kong in 1945 and the place had been returned to China, it is possible to speculate what would have happened. In 1949 Hong Kong, like other big cities in China, would have been taken over by the People's Republic Government. This would have meant that, after 30 or so years of communist rule, Hong Kong would have been as backward economically as the rest of China. There would have been no 'Hong Kong miracle'. After 1978 the Territory would not have been able to form a nucleus for the economic development for the rest of China with its 'Open Door Policy.'\n\nPigeons\n\nUp until 1914 every marine launch of Hong Kong's Water Police (as the Marine Police were known then) took a few pigeons on board. These were used to fly messages back to headquarters in Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon. But in spite of the introduction of radio the pigeons were kept on strength. Members of the force contributed to buy them food. The flock of about 50 birds came to be looked upon much like the Barbary Apes at Gibraltar or the Ravens at the Tower of London. It was said when the pigeons departed from Marine Police Headquarters so would the British from Hong Kong.\n\nThe pigeons disappeared during the Japanese occupation but were", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216222, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2002", "page_number": 521, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "455\n\ncould sometimes hear barking deer calling from Victoria Peak. At the time one could still hire a sedan chair and four coolies to carry one up to Conduit Road. There were half a dozen or so parked regularly in Wyndham Street, in Central, up until the late 1950s. The fare was 30 cents for each 15 minutes with a 30 cents surcharge. The working life of a chair coolie was said to be eight years.\n\nAs with many houses in Conduit Road at the time, 41 Conduit Road had a superb view and, long before the days of cross-harbour tunnels, one of the pastimes of children was counting the number of ferries they could spot. Between the two World Wars an eccentric Englishman who lived in Robinson Road, not far away, did not own a clock. He used a telescope to tell the time from the clock tower then standing in Pedder Street. In the \"good old days,\" more than one British Governor used the activities in the harbour as a barometer of the strength of the economy. We are talking of times, up until the mid 1930s, when a cannon was fired from Blackhead Point, in Tsim Sha Tsui, to let residents know when a typhoon was approaching or, alternatively, the mail ship had arrived. Occasionally, inhabitants were not sure to which of the two events the firing referred!\n\nWhen the FCC vacated the premises the final days had come for the old mansion at 41 Conduit Road. In 1960, it was bought by Cheng Hing Realty and, in 1966, rebought by Court Properties. As with so much of Hong Kong it was a case of 'Hungry for the new forget the old.' The old building was demolished and the site remained empty for some time. The sale price was reputed to have been $13 million. The site was then redeveloped. In the summer of 1970, there were 1,200 applications to purchase the 400 flats at Realty Gardens. My wife and I were successful in the ballot and we took possession of our newly completed flat in Venice Court, for which we paid, in mid 1972, the princely sum of $114,000. Prices were still low after the property slump brought on largely by the drawn-out 1967 riots. My flat has been a splendid investment. We let it for the first four years, unfurnished, at $2,000 a month. We moved in ourselves on 1 March 1976.\n\nAlthough I can see a narrow strip of the harbour and Stonecutters Island (an island no longer) from my bedroom window, my flat at Realty Gardens in fact faces south. It is thus shielded from the cold north-easterly monsoon in the winter and receives the benefits of the cool", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216264, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2003", "page_number": 23, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "from last year and the year before. The SARS outbreak was to blame for some of this, since, in the early part of last year we were a little careful about putting events into the programme. Recently, we thought we were going to have to give up our lecture venue at the City Hall for some months, and so slowed the programme down, only to find that the long-awaited renovation and refitting of the Extension Activities Room had been put off, perhaps to the autumn, perhaps indefinitely, because of financial restraints. To put this into perspective, last year we had 17 lectures (2 more than this year), 9 local visits (5 more than this year), and 3 visits to places outside Hong Kong as against 4 this year. Last year the programme thus had 29 items on it, and this year only 23. In 2001-2002 there were 24. We will endeavour to do better during this up-coming year! The Council would welcome Members suggesting items for inclusion in the programme. Members willing to lead visits are particularly urged to put themselves forward!\n\nImproved Relationships with other Branches, and Extended Availability of the Journal in Libraries around the World\n\nCouncil has continued to take action to improve relations with our sister societies around the world, and has also taken action to ensure that full sets of the Journal are to be found in more Libraries, both academic and public. I am glad to repeat what I said last year, that full sets of the Journal are now to be found in all five of the Regional Libraries of the Leisure and Cultural Services Department (in the City Hall, and in the Kowloon, Sha Tin, Tuen Mun and Tsuen Wan Regional Libraries), with three sets in the Causeway Bay Central Library. Sets are also available in the Public Library Service in Macau, and in Shenzhen, as well as in Shanghai. Negotiations are in hand to get sets into the library services at Canton and Peking as well.\n\nAll the tertiary academic libraries in Hong Kong also now have full sets (two sets at Hong Kong University), as do the libraries of the Museums of the Leisure and Cultural Services Department. We are in process of ensuring that the other Museum libraries in Hong Kong also get sets.\n\nDuring this upcoming year, Council will continue to try to increase the number of libraries around the world which have the Journal.\n\nxxiii", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216412, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2003", "page_number": 171, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "121\n\n176,243 grt. Built in 1907 in Dumbarton, Scotland as CULNA for British India S.N. Co. Ltd. In 1923 bought by Ryuoh Kisen K.K. of Dairen, Manchuria and re-named RYUJIN MARU. Japanese flag. She was to be salvaged from the Tan Rocks however on 13th April 1942, when to the south of the Bungo Strait between Kyushu and Shikoku, to be torpedoed and sunk by U.S.S. GRAYLING SS-209 (Lieut. Commander E. Olsen).\n\n1*2,549 grt. In 1915 built at Taikoo Dockyard in Hong Kong for China Navigation Co. Ltd. (Butterfield & Swire). From 2nd August to 5th December 1922 ashore at Swatow, there blown by a typhoon. Eventually in May 1948 to be sold for breaking up.\n\n19PRO ADM 116/2843. Report 158/197 dated 6 November 1931.\n\n20770 tons. Built shortly after the Great War. Three 4.7\" guns.\n\n214,400 tons. Launched in October 1911. Eight 6\" guns.\n\n223,802 grt. Built in 1919 for Osaka Shosen K.K. On 31 May 1944 to be torpedoed and sunk to the west of the Kuril Islands by U.S.S. BARB SS-220 (Lieut. Commander E.B. Fluckey).\n\n233,001 grt. A new ship, built in 1931 by Scotts at Greenock for China Navigation Co. Ltd. (Butterfield & Swire). Between the World Wars there was a great demand for a passenger service between Shanghai and destinations to the north such as Tsingtao, Wei-Hai-Wei, Chefoo and Tientsin. The ship had been especially built for this trade with twin screw steam turbines to give 16 knots, and her cabin accommodation was luxurious. For winter service her bow was ice strengthened.\n\n241,765 grt. Also built by Scotts but rather earlier, in 1905. She too served on the Shanghai/Tientsin route but was reaching the end of her useful life. In November 1933 to be sold for breaking up in Shanghai.\n\nPRO ADM 116/2844. 158/1559 dated 24 June 1932.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]